Arizona State Head Coach Kenny Dillingham Postgame vs. Texas A&M:
Saturday, September 12, 2026
On Texas A&M’s scrimmage yards:
“Three plays, 21 points. I told the guys in the locker room, ‘three plays and 21 points off turnovers, you’re not going to beat anybody’. If you just watched the game, we’re a good football team, we played well for most of the game. Four plays in the game, really three critical plays in the game. Those plays don’t happen, and it’s a new football game. That’s football, you can’t let those plays happen. You watched the game, we’re out there watching. We looked like we belonged, and that wasn’t the issue. We just made the mistakes, starting from the staff, and those mistakes were critical.”
On the critical mistake plays:
“[We] called a play action shot that I shouldn't have, bad call by me. It resulted in the first, you can call it a pick six, but a sack or fumbles whatever that was, I don’t know how they labeled it in the stat sheet. But called a play action shot, one of the few we called, it was a sack fumble or sack pick, that was one of them. Another one was fumbled. Another one was miscommunication, on a play which caused a pick six. That was pure miscommunication, thought we were throwing something else, and they didn’t block somebody. And then obviously we just lost the ball in the sun on the punt, which led to seven points. Those four turnovers were absolutely critical in the football game. Other than that, take away those four plays, we played pretty good. Those plays count, and they count for more than the other plays, and that’s what we’ve got to clean up.”
On if Texas A&M showed anything that they didn’t expect:
“No, not really. I thought we did a good job moving the ball, especially up until the fourth quarter. You get down by that much and everything, it creates chaos. We were kind of out of the plan a little bit, and that’s when I look at myself and say, ‘That we need to get out of the plan’. And after the punt, after the turnover, on the plus 35 before the fumbled six or whatever, we need to get out of our plan and go into ultra aggressive mode. Bad decision by me. Like I told the guys, I made a lot of mistakes during the game, I’ve got to be better. But we can play with anybody.”
On the play call and going for a fake punt in the first half on fourth and one:
“If we get a certain look, it’s there. If we get a certain look, it’s not there. So it’s a check play. If we get the look, we’re going to run it. Miscommunication is something. I thought we had it, but we didn’t. So they didn’t check out of it, and once again I don’t mind those types of things. If we're going to go out, we’re going to go out swinging. So I feel good about that. But we just can’t self-destruct. I think that’s the thing that we took away from the game. Like I said, we just self-destruct. Anybody who watches that game is going to look at the score and say, ‘What? How did that happen?’. That was not vindictive of the football team that we have. But it’s just what happens. We’ve got to be able to reload, and rock and roll from there.”
On the amount of penalties:
“So we didn’t have procedural penalties. We had I think one on defense, and one late in the game on offense. I think those were only our two procedural penalties, so I need to go look and watch them. We had a hands to the face on defense. We had a defensive pass interference on a fourth down, game-changing that led to seven points. So there were a lot of little plays out there that stacked. I need to go watch the tape because it wasn’t like discipline penalties just off the start. They got us from the clap a couple of times on that D-line. I think they may actually had us twice, which obviously we have to clean up. But offensively in that environment, we didn’t have many catastrophic penalties. So I’ve got to go watch the tape to figure out those penalties more. They only had one penalty with five yards, that happened in the fourth quarter with three minutes left. That’s impressive.”
On the environment and how they kept their composure in the first half:
“I thought we played well. I thought we played a good football game. The first three quarters of the football game I thought we played well. The score wasn’t in our favor. But I thought we played a really good football game. That fourth quarter started on that one play and it was three straight turnovers. I think everybody just started pressing. You just can’t press in those situations. It starts with me, you can’t press in that situation because you all watched the game, we played a good football game. We played solidly, clean football, I just have to look at these penalties.”
On the turnaround with heading to London and how he will manage it:
“It hasn’t really been done often. I told the guys we have to flush this and that we are a good football team. I’m not at all concerned about that. If there is one takeaway from this game it is that we’re a good football team. I don’t leave this game not thinking that we can beat anybody. That’s what I believe. But I also would say, ‘man, if we had 4 turnovers you can lose to anybody too.’ I think that is what I left this game saying is the scoreboard isn’t vindictive all the time of the team you are. But they were the best team by far today. Because of those four plays and we have got to clean that up because you won’t win many games.”
On not letting today’s game dwell on the team going into next week in London:
“We are going to London, so I think it’s going to be flushed. We are going on a bus, a 30-minute flight, to go to a restaurant to eat for three hours, then get on a 10-hour flight to land Sunday so hopefully it will be flushed. I think stats are for losers and our stats showed that we played well today. And that’s a great example of it, that stats are for losers. But it does show that we can be competitive and it does show that we can hang and that we’re a great football team. But we have to clean up the important things, flush it and go play well in week three.”
Arizona State QB Cutter Boley:
On what happened in the second half that led the game getting out of control:
“I had a few really costly mistakes that cost us a lot in the second half. It turned the tides of that game. But, overall, I felt like we were really in control. Most of the time, just kept hurting ourselves. I felt like most of the time they didn’t stop us, we stopped ourselves.”
On his two interceptions and what he saw:
“Those are mistakes on my part. Those are balls that I forced in there and it can’t happen. Things that can’t happen. It’s a bang-bang sport and a game of inches so things I can’t do.”
On the atmosphere on the road:
“Just another day in the office and just another game. You get out there, it is just same old football. Nothing really different. The crowd was never an issue and nothing like that was ever as issue. It wasn’t too big for any of our guys. But, I felt like we did what we wanted to do besides hurt ourselves on a few plays that changed that football game.”
On Reed Harris’ performance:
“Reed is really reliable and we trust the ball in his hands. He is a guy that is able to get open in a lot of different ways. It is a guy that I really trust out there and throwing the ball too.”
Arizona State WR Reed Harris:
On his connection with Boley and trusting him to put the ball in place:
“I’m real proud of Cutter for the way that we stepped up coming into this atmosphere. It’s daunting from hindsight, but we played a good game. We played a real good first half, and then it was three of four positions where we kind of just handed the ball to them. But that’s stuff that we can learn from, and we just have to keep going. Stay consistent on offense for the rest of the season.”
On being able to find space in their defense:
“We had a simple game plan for the most part. We practiced it throughout the week, it was basically the same looks we got all week on offense from the scout team. For the most part, we went out there and executed. Just looking at the first half, it was pretty good for the most part. But there’s always things that we can improve on, and that’s what we’re going to look at. We’re going to look at the film, and then move on to London.”
On bouncing back and preparing to play in London:
“This isn’t a vacation. We have to get better. We can’t treat this like we’re just going to have fun in London. We have to lock in and go drop the hammer on Kansas.”