ASU football coaches frustrated by inability to limit Aztecs run game

Despite having the No. 1 ranked rushing defense in the country entering the game, Arizona State allowed 311 yards on the ground in its 28-21 road loss to San Diego State on Saturday.

ASU’s first-year defensive coordinator Danny Gonzales, who was hired away from SDSU in December, has installed his own iteration of the 3-3-5 scheme he learned from his mentor, Aztecs’ head coach Rocky Long.

“We’re trying to build a culture here,” Gonzales said post-game. “(We’re trying to) establish what Rocky Long established, an identity. We’re still trying to get there.”

In the first two games, the scheme worked. The Sun Devils trounced UTSA 49-7 in Week 1 and pulled out a close 16-13 victory against then-ranked No. 15 Michigan State in Week 2 en route to a No. 23 ranking heading into Week 3 against the Aztecs. The Sun Devils had allowed just 32.5 rushing yards per game to that point.

However, against SDSU, ASU’s new defense was ineffective at stopping the run. In what was supposed to be its redemption match, having lost to the Aztecs 30-20 in Tempe a year ago as senior running back Rashaad Penny rushed for 216 yards and one touchdown, the Sun Devils failed to to halt SDSU’s running backs yet again.

“The point that I’ve been trying to get across to them is don’t believe we’re as good as everybody is saying, because we weren’t,” Gonzales said. “And I had been saying that for the last two weeks. We had a chance to be pretty good, but we got out-physicaled.”

Junior running back Juwan Washington and sophomore Chase Jasmin split a majority of the snaps for SDSU. Washington accumulated 138 yards and one touchdown on 27 attempts while Jasmin contributed 112 yards and a score on 19 attempts after Washington went down with an unknown injury.

“It’s painful to watch,” ASU head coach Herm Edwards said during his weekly Monday press conference. “It’s a hard pill to swallow when people run the ball on you because there’s hardly anything you can do because the ball is on the ground. And unless you can cause a fumble, and they’ve got good runners, it becomes a short game and a long afternoon defensively while your offense sits over there watching the clock being bled down.”

After a decent first half, in which ASU senior quarterback Manny Wilkins went 18-for-23 for 235 yards and one touchdown (including a 1-yard rushing touchdown of his own), the Sun Devils struggled to create or sustain any sort of offensive production in the second half. Their inability to produce contributed to how much its defense was on the field. ASU had four straight three-and-outs after the halftime break and managed just 36 total rushing yards on 24 carries.

“The defense was on the field in the second half because we couldn’t make a stop, so that’s our fault,” Gonzales said. “…They out-physicaled us and kept the chains moving.”

ASU senior nose tackle Renell Wren has been a physically imposing force and one of the primary factors in the Sun Devils’ run defense success thus far. But the Aztecs were able to run around him and his snaps were more limited than in either of the team’s first two games.

“At one point Renell got dinged up,” Gonzales said. “I’m not exactly sure what it was. They told me he was down, and then he was up, and then he was down, and then he was up.”

With No. 10 Washington on tap this Saturday in Seattle, ASU will have to clean up its defensive lapses and offensive inefficiencies should it hope to win its first road game of the Edwards’ era.

“You watch our last (game) tape and we weren’t very good against the run,” Edwards said. “A lot of alignment errors and basically misses in tackles that allowed [SDSU] big plays. Prior to that we were pretty good versus the run. We’ve got to get that corrected.”

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