Herm Edwards wants to build ASU’s team around QB Jayden Daniels

Arizona State football head coach Herm Edwards isn’t going to mess around or be too patient with giving his now-sophomore quarterback Jayden Daniels the keys.

“I told him when the season was over, ‘OK, it’s your offense. We’re gonna build it around you now,'” he told Arizona Sports’ Burns & Gambo Friday.

“I want him to enjoy being a college football player, I really do. With that being said, I think we gotta build a team around him. And that is the mindset this year to be quite honest — to build an offense around the quarterback’s skill set.”

“Last year he walked into a situation as a freshman and I basically told him, ‘Look, we’ve got a dynamic runner and we’re gonna run the ball maybe a little more than you would like but that is to protect you. Right now, I don’t know what you’re going to do with the football to be quite honest. I’m not gonna put that much pressure on you to have to throw it 40 times a game.'”

Edwards spoke about Daniels with a pinch of making sure to keep his young signal-caller grounded after a breakout freshman season.

“Right now, he’s getting a lot a lot of notoriety, and rightly so, for what he was able to do last year and some of the games that he played in were big games against national opponents and he was able to win those games and a lot of them came in the fourth quarter,” he said.

Daniels threw for 2,943 yards, which is a school record for freshmen, passing Rudy Carpenter’s 2,273. He was the third freshman in school history to win his first career start and owns five of the 12 300-plus yard passing performances by freshmen in ASU history.

Last season, Daniels’ throws came on a 60.7% completion rate, resulting in 17 touchdowns and two interceptions. He also rushed 125 times for 355 yards and three scores.

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