Dillingham: Arizona State football responds well after ‘stupid mistakes’

TEMPE — Entering the first of two bye weeks, Arizona State football has shown head coach Kenny Dillingham the right stuff when responding from mistakes.

“I know just throughout the season what I’m most proud of is our guys don’t quit,” Dillingham said Monday after a loss to Texas Tech dropped ASU to 3-1 on the year. “Even when we made stupid mistakes, which (it was) uncharacteristic of us to do some of the things that were done last week … the positive was our guys that made those mistakes were able to regather their composure and go finish.”

One of the mistakes in Saturday’s 30-22 loss at Texas Tech was a taunting penalty by safety Myles Rowser, who had just picked up a big sack on third down for the Sun Devil defense.

The drive didn’t result in points for the Red Raiders following the free first down, but they were able to pin ASU at its own 2-yard line when they could’ve had to punt from inside their own 20.

“You could take a guy off the field and (tell him to) calm down, calm down … but at the end of the day, if you’ve got a competitor he knows he messed up,” Dillingham said. “If your guy isn’t harder on himself for making a mistake that hurts the team then he shouldn’t be on the field to begin with.

“Hopefully those guys that had some uncharacteristically kind of stupid penalties don’t have them again and they were learning experiences because we haven’t had those since I’ve been here.”

Rowser went on to tie for the most snaps and post the highest grade for the game among ASU defenders, according to Pro Football Focus. He had nine tackles, one sack, one tackle for loss and three passes defensed in the otherwise outstanding performance.

What changes will Arizona State football make during the bye week?

Dillingham wants to get more of a rotation going at running back but says it’s hard to keep Cam Skattebo off the field.

“He’s always next to you like ‘I’m good, I’m good, I’m good,’ so it’s really hard to be like, ‘Well, if you’re good just stand here (while another running back is in),'” the head coach said.

Skattebo leads the nation in rushing attempts (86) through four weeks, which Dillingham doesn’t think is sustainable if the running back is to be fresh for the end of games and the season.

“We gotta do a better job as a staff of managing him and letting him know going into a game that we have to keep you fresh for later,” Dillingham added. “I’ve got to do a better job making sure we stay to a plan of how we want to rotate even if Skat’s telling us he’s good.”

Dillingham also said he wants to shrink down what’s being demanded of the players on a schematic basis.

He pointed to a short week leading up to the Texas State win and longer week that can sometimes be “a curse” leading into the Texas Tech loss as two situations where they didn’t manage that as well as they could have.

“I didn’t feel like our guys played fast enough, so we’ve gotta be able to shrink what we’re doing to make sure our guys can play fast,” Dillingham said. “When you have a billion things in, it’s hard … That’s me, I gotta do a better job of that, not just throwing ideas out there.”

ASU will look for the program’s first Big 12 win when the Sun Devils host Kansas on Oct. 5 at 5 p.m. MST at Mountain America Stadium.