ASU’s Herm Edwards: Jayden Daniels will be ‘pressed upon to be a leader’

Youth was the theme of 2019 for the Arizona State Sun Devils.

That won’t change much in 2020 as head coach Herm Edwards goes into his third season at the helm for the Sun Devils with numerous underclassmen slated to start.

The most notable is sophomore quarterback Jayden Daniels, who took ASU football by storm as a true freshman as he led ASU to an 8-5 season that culminated in a 20-14 victory over Florida State in the Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl.

“He’s going to be pressed upon to be a leader. That wasn’t required last year for him and done purposely by me,” Edwards said.

“I told him, ‘You don’t need to lead, you need to play quarterback.’ But now this is his offense and he understands that. He’s in this building every day. He meets with me every day when he’s in this building. He understands that the team is built around him and that’s the next step for any young quarterback.”

One major change will be the Sun Devils’ backfield due to the fact that the oldest ball carrier on the team is only a redshirt sophomore. That’s because former ASU running back Eno Benjamin elected to forgo his senior season and declare for the 2020 NFL Draft.

So who is supposed to fill the void left by ASU’s leading rusher in 2019? True freshmen DeaMonte Trayanum and Daniyel Ngata.

“Chip (Trayanum), you can see the power in the guy, his ability to lower his pads,” Edwards said. “Ngata reminds me a little bit of Eno. I’m not saying he’s Eno, but he has that ability to make people miss in space. … They both have really put in a lot of work to learn the offense.”

The entire Sun Devil football team will have to learn a new playbook after the hiring of former Boise State offensive coordinator Zak Hill this offseason.

And after a season in which Benjamin had over twice as many carries (253) than Daniels had pass attempts (113), it will be interesting to see how ASU’s offense will look with a brand new play-caller, running backs, and a quarterback with 13 collegiate starts under his belt that Edwards said now has the ability to audible at the line of scrimmage.

“If you can average 70-plus plays (per game) — I’m not a 50-50 guy — but I’d like to run it within about 30 times,” Edwards said. “So where does that back fit in and how many runs does he get? Does he get 25 or so and then the other back gets the rest of the majority of it? We have to figure that out.

“With the four backs that we have right now, which of the two are going to play the most? Because you’re only playing two backs in the end. You’re not playing three backs. That’s not going to happen. That’s not reality. There’s going to be two guys and they’re going to have to carry the load.”

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