Arizona State Head Coach Kenny Dillingham:
On if he noticed anything new after reviewing the film:
“To be honest, no. It was pretty – what we saw mid game and on the field was very, very accurate on most of the place to what we saw on the film. So it was very, very accurate. Similar are there are a few things that you'd like to have back? Yes, but to say there would be a drastic difference, probably not.”
On the Injuries on the offensive line and team:
“Obviously that position has been decimated with injuries. Unfortunately, some contacts, some non contact, some running in the off-season. A variety of different reasons. Emmit (Bohle) is going to be out for the season. It's unfortunate for him. What a great person, what a great worker, what he did with his body. This off-season and getting into shape was incredible. I'm sure you guys are there at practice – the strides he made were awesome. When it comes to the other guys, those guys as of now are still questionable. Ben Coleman is out as well, but the other guys are questionable and we'll see how it goes as the season or as this game progresses. That's obviously a challenge and we got to find ways to adapt and change what we do offensively to put our guys in the best situations to succeed again. That may be a little bit different looking offense that I have done in the past just to utilize our players to the best of our ability.”
On an update with QB Drew Pyne:
“He should be good for this week. Not 100% right now. We should know later this afternoon, but he should be healthy this week from that standpoint. So we'll see what the game plan and what everything goes from there.”
On the extend of OL Emmit Bohle’s injury:
“Emmit is going to be out for the season. It's unfortunate for him. What a great person, what a great worker, what he did with his body. This off-season and getting into shape was incredible. I'm sure you guys are there at practice – the strides he made were awesome.”
On an interaction with Fresno State QB Mikey Keene who he recruited:
“Oh, I know exactly who it was. It was actually one of my good buddies, Alex who’s now the head coach of South Florida, went from Iowa State to UCF at the time and he reached out about different quarterbacks to sign. And I said, there’s this kid Mikey Keene who’s a heck of a player out here. And if you’re looking for one, this guy fits what you guys do in my opinion. So he came out here and he signed him and I think he is an incredible, accurate, smart. I remember recruiting him and he had over a 4.0 GPA watching him throw live super, super accurate. So you see that play style on Saturdays, you see him be accurate, you see him be decisive. So I know he’ll be very excited to come back home, come back here and play in front of friends and family. So we are going to get the best of him in this week’s game.”
On Fresno State’s passing offense:
“Yeah I mean we are going back to work. That is always the correct answer is you go back, you live, you learn, you get better. We show things on the board in terms of things we can improve on. What’s your favorite mistake? Right, I show my mistakes. I think it’s really important for people to know nobody’s perfect. Coach included. We’re all in this together and I show my mistakes, I show our staff mistakes, I show their mistakes and I show how we can get better and it’s all about taking ownership. It’s extreme ownership. You should never point the finger at somebody else because if something is going wrong, what you should look at what you could have done to make it better. It doesn't matter what that is. We should always look at what we can do individually to fix the problem even if you don’t feel like it's your problem. Find a way to make it, your problem, find a way to find a solution. And that’s really the challenge for us is extreme ownership and getting back to work and moving along. Their Quick passing game like you just described. So I think it fits their quarterback skill set. I know their head coach has been throwing the ball successfully for a long time. You can tell that the quarterback and the coordinator and the head coach are all on the same page and the confidence he plays with and compare that with his intelligence at the quarterback position. He gets the ball out quick, doesn’t take too many negatives. So that will be the challenge this week is can we get to him or get him rattled to get him off the spot.”
On learning from the second-half struggles:
“In the past we’ve saved some of our top calls for the second half and kind of held a series, not all the time, but sometimes when I’ve been on teams that have just struggled getting out fast in the second half, so maybe we’ll save a series that we really like that we would carry in the first half or maybe the third series of the game. We kind of know this formation of this structure, maybe we’ll save that for the second half. We kind of know and it’s scripted out what we’re going to as long as they’re in their base plan and nothing shocked us harder to do that when you are early in the season because you haven’t seen everything they’ve shown. So there is a lot more outliers. You don’t want to hold something right, because you don’t know exactly what you are going to get like you do as the season progresses. But that could be something that we get to more and then at the end of the day, we moved the ball that first drive of the second half, we got stopped on the third one and the fourth and one and you got to convert a third one and fourth and one. I think if we convert that drive, the game different but so I think that was really the key factor of opening up that second half and then we just got to not get as affected when we don’t have that success to start the second half. I preach the middle eight so much. I think sometimes when we don’t have the success coming out at the halftime to win the middle eight that sometimes the emotion behind it deflates and we got to do a better job responding when that deflation happens.”
On his favorite mistake from Saturday:
“My favorite mistake for me was the time there was a 3rd and 6th second half, I'm not calling plays coach Baldwin is, I think he is doing a good job and I wanted to throw a bubble. I saw it, I liked it. My mind said the wrong word and because I am the head coach they ran it So we wasted a play on third down and it was 100% my fault. We had Jalen Conyers and our running back try to switch sides of the field and we snapped the ball with two seconds left and it was 100% on me because my mic is down and Im yelling “bubble, bubble, bubble” and that’s potentially a play for us and then everything changes and it’s 100% my fault. So wasting a drive on me, I got to do better. I got to put my mic up and kind of be quiet at times.”
On the overall performance on the defense:
“Yeah, I thought the defense played hard, man. I think our football team is playing hard. I think if you watch us play, the effort is high and the, the detail of the of not getting 12 penalties, not jumping off sides is there, right? We just got to learn how to win now. And I think the defense is playing winning football right now. I think the offense is close. We're playing a half of winning football, we're playing plays of winning football. We just got to be more consistent. But I love the fact that the defense was aggressive, they attacked, they got after the quarterback, not the communication was significantly better.You didn't see three guys in the back end open up in some of the exotic packages and then in the second half, I think we just got a little tired when, you know, when you're not having sustained drives offensively and they have more play in the second half and they can have those sustained drives. You know, the depth that we're trying to achieve there could help that we're not there yet. So we got to be able to get off the field earlier in drives that way, we don't have those long sustained drives.”
On the post-game conversation with Oklahoma State Head Coach Mike Gundy:
“Sometimes, especially when you come after a loss or it's absolutely imperative not to try to reinvent the wheel, especially the sort of, yeah, the process is not the Xs and the Os, the process is not any of the game playing or the play calls or who plays, what the process is the standard and how you operate. And I think that's what he meant by that was, don't trust your schemes. I mean, that's a guy who has adapted his schemes better than anybody in the country over his time. The process is the standards that are set for the effort, the standards that are set for the discipline in your program, the type of people you recruit what you believe in that you want your program to look like in 3 to 4 years. Trust that process. Don't get frustrated when other people have success in.We're going to be a little bit different because right now what we're doing, we got to be a little bit different, especially with what we alluded to with some injuries up front. We got to be a little different, but at the same token, we're going to trust our process, we are going to adapt to the personnel. We have as the high school coach and me and we're going to press along and do whatever we can to win this football game.So we talked after the game about the fourth down plays and your tendency to be aggressive now that you've watched it back and now you do have the personal injuries to consider any thoughts about. ”
On if his aggressive play-calling will continue:
“The only one that I could even question when looking back and even close from a statistical standpoint is the end of the first half, about four minutes left when we went for the fourth and five on the plus 45. That's the only one that you could argue. With four minutes left, you could still punt, you could, we only had one time out though, because we had to burn them.
You could then get the ball back in a decent territory if you get a three and out and then try to kick a field goal to get the middle 81. But that's the one that, in hindsight, 50 50 I think that's a coin flip one, which I think those, maybe we will be more conservative but maybe we'll be more aggressive depending on the game plan.”
On the punting unit and if he’s worried about it:
“We just have to get him into a rhythm. I mean you all see him in practice. The dude boots it. He boots it. We just have to make sure that he knows that we have confidence in him to punt the ball like he does in practice. Because he boots the thing. The dude kicks it 50-yards consistently and punts the thing consistently 50-yards in practice at a high, high rate. So he has the ability, he has it in him. Punting is like golfing, you get in and out of rhythms. We have to get him back into a rhythm and get his confidence back. But I have full confidence that we can flip the field when hes punts the ball to how he punts in practice.”
On if it’s hard to watch the offense struggle as a head coach:
“Yes, of course. But I mean I have a huge say in what we’re doing offensively throughout the week. It’s just part of it. We have to adapt, change. I’ve been here before in these scenarios. I think Jaden (Rashada) has been doing a phenomenal job completing the ball down the field. For being a young buck I think he has over a 60-percent completion percentage. He’s played two games, has one turnover worthy play. He’s scrambled, extended plays. I think he did a phenomenal job in the two games. But does not moving the ball frustrating? Yes. Would it be frustrating if I was calling it or not calling it? Yes. Would it be frustrating if I was a fan? Yes. So I think anybody who has any invested interest in the games are all in the same boat here and we’re going to be creative with being more productive because we have the skill guys that are good players. We have to be a little bit different and adapt and change to get those guys the ball.”
On how his experiences as a high school coach translate to the college level:
“I think adapting to personnel. When you coach high school, you kind of get the guys you coach and back when I coached high school you get the guys you coach and you coach them. And you have to adapt your schemes around them. I think the best high school coaches were willing to adapt to their players and change the scheme of things. So when you have injuries, when you get people dinged up and when these things happen. You have to adapt. That may be something you majored in practice or in fall camp because your team is drastically different. SO you have to make some drastic changes to what you do to fit the drastic changes to what your team is. So I think we can’t be scared to change. And to get our of our comfort zone. To get out of my comfort zone. Of what i’m used too. So I think thats the fun part of the high school coach background is. No i’m not too scared to take risks, i’m not scared to make changes even if it makes me a little uncomfortable even if it’s the best thing for our guys.”
On thinking if a quarterback will transfer if they don’t play when factoring a QB:
“This has nothing to do with the quarterback. This is a unit that we have to figure out. Its the best combination of a unit. What is that really expensive thing that people put on fries? Truffle right? My wife always talks about it. Truffles elite. But you can put truffles on everything. So you got to find a way. You may have an elite guy at some place, but the truffle may not make it better because the recipe is different now because you don’t have these other ingredients. So even though you have truffle there, you may not be able to use it. If all the other ingredients are here. So sorry for the weird comparison, we were just eating the other night and my wife talked about ‘You know those fries are expensive because its truffle right?’ But I think that’s the best way to explain offense and defense in football is everybody wants to treat it as it’s one person or one this. It’s a recipe of success and one person may be so great at all these things. But because you don’t have these other things in our arsenal now, this person may not be as successful with this current recipe. And you have to be able to adapt to what you have and then be as successful as possible with it. So I think to answer your question is its not just quarterback driven, I think Jaden has done a phenomenal job. This is about what we have and what we’re going into the game with and how to make our guys on our team the most successful as possible.”
On a possible quarterback change in the future:
“The odds of us using multiple quarterbacks. I don’t believe in us using multiple quarterbacks unless there is an advantage of some sort to use multiple quarterbacks. Is there a chance you could go into a game using multiple quarterbacks? Maybe. But I think it gets people out of a rhythm. Someone asked me the other day ‘Any thought of making a move at quarterback when you’re in the middle of a game?’ Nope! That was the last thing on my mind. We have 99 problems but that ain’t one. And I think that was my thought process. Now for us moving forward, we have to look at our current personnel, current roster. Our players in the best position possible to be successful this week. What puts our players in the best position to be successful moving forward within the program.”