ASU football searching for answers

The reasons for ASU’s three-game losing streak are clear:
poor tackling, poor defending, poor offensive execution —
particularly in the red zone.

The reasons for why these issues have surfaced now, two
months into the season, aren’t so clear.

How do you explain a team going from 6-2 to 6-5 in less
than a month?

“I honestly haven’t sensed anything different,” answered
quarterback Brock Osweiler. “It’s just, come game day,
the results haven’t been very good the past couple of
weeks. I really don’t know what has been going on. I
haven’t noticed a regression or how people are practicing
different during the week or anything.”

Saturday night after ASU’s defeat to rival UA, defensive
tackle Bo Moos talked about a team that perhaps believed
it “had arrived and we lost hunger” after the promising
start.

Head coach Dennis Erickson disagrees.

“If anything, we got to a point where we were 6-2 and I
don’t think it was overconfidence, but we were just
playing to win the next game. I guess what I’m saying is
playing not to lose but playing to win because that was a
little bit out of our comfort zone in the last 10-15
years.

“I don’t know that there’s a total answer for the question
that you guys are asking,” he continued. “If I had the
answer I would try to solve the problem.”

Here are the problems over the last three games:

* Defensively, ASU has allowed almost 15-hundred yards of
total offense and has forced just three turnovers, while
opponents are converting 48-percent of their third downs
(22-of-46)

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