Arizona State’s Todd Graham: ‘We’ll be better at wide receiver’
Apr 8, 2015, 4:30 PM | Updated: 4:30 pm
The future is bright for Arizona State football.
The Sun Devils are coming off of back-to-back 10-win seasons for the first time since the early 1970s and they’re expected to compete for a Pac-12 South championship in 2015.
But they do have a couple of big spots to fill as they continue season preparation in spring practice. Namely, wide receiver Jaelen Strong.
The 6-foot-4 wide receiver caught 157 passes for 2,287 yards and 17 touchdowns over the last two seasons. That’s a large chunk of the passing offense to replace after Strong declared himself eligible for the NFL Draft.
But head coach Todd Graham isn’t worried about who will fill Strong’s shoes. Not one bit.
“I’ll tell you this, and you’ll find this surprising, but we’ll be better at wide receiver,” Graham told Doug and Wolf Wednesday morning on Arizona Sports 98.7 FM. “And we will look really different.”
With new starting quarterback Mike Bercovici at the controls and D.J. Foster shifting from running back to wide receiver, Graham said the ASU offense will resemble one of the more successful offenses in the NFL.
“When you watch New England, and how they have those smaller, faster guys that they’re getting the ball to in space and allow them to run the football, Mike is very precise and accurate and very smart, so you’ll see a lot more quick passing game. You’ll see a lot more of those seam throws. You’re going to see some come-backs to the field and things like that, that we really have not been able to run,” he said.
In addition to Foster playing a key role, Graham singled out DeChavon “Gump” Hayes as a player to watch in 2015.
“With Gump and Foster, those are guys that we’re going to move around — and I don’t anybody in the league has any two receivers that are more explosive than them to move around and get the ball in space,” he said. “A lot of things like you see the Patriots doing and our ability to have more rhythm passes and our rhythm passing game I don’t think anybody’s seen in the last three years because Taylor Kelly was definitely a run, play-action pass, naked boot kind of guy.”
Hayes, a junior college transfer from Lackawanna College in Pennsylvania, redshirted during the 2014 season after being rated as the second-best JC running back prospect in the nation by Rivals.com. He ran for 837 yards and seven touchdowns on 107 carries in just seven games in 2013.
But Graham is excited about the entire receiver group and its continued development.
“I think Terrell Chatman is a guy that’s going to help us,” he said. “We’ve got guys behind them like Gary Chambers and Fred Gammage that are solid role guys.
“And our tight end corps, Raymond Epps is going to be a guy who is a great target and that’s something with De’Marieya Nelson being hurt last year, we kind of lost that a little bit last year and that was a big part of our offense with Chris Coyle (in 2013).”
Chatman was one of the final pieces of Graham’s 2015 recruiting class. The four-star prospect out of Baton Rouge, Louis. picked ASU over Miami, TCU, Arizona, Georgia and others.
Chambers and Gammage combined for 26 catches for 331 yards and three touchdowns for the Devils in 2014.
“We’re going to look different, but I do think we’ll be able to stretch the field vertically and I think we’re going to be more explosive,” Graham said. “I can tell you from out there on the field, when you make a mistake against our offense, it goes to the house.”
