Not Sure Arizona State Will Change Their MO for Date With Pokes on Saturday

STILLWATER – There was more than a little surprise last Thursday when Oklahoma State and Central Michigan settled into the game and after the Cowboys took the lead 7-0. On the first possession after the opening kickoff, Chippewas quarterback Daniel Richardson fired short passes on the first three plays, the third resulting in a first down.

OK, that was the first series but by halftime, Richardson had attempted 22 passes and was 36-of-49 passing for 424-yards, most of those plays West Coast concepts, by the end of the game. That tied last season’s most pass attempts for CMU. This was a little different than what Oklahoma State expected from Central Michigan on offense.

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Richardson completed 36-of-49 passes vs. Oklahoma State in the opener.

Hey, it got the Chippewas back in a game that was a 51-15 blowout after the Cowboys scored to open the third quarter.

“I was talking to our team, I said, ‘It’s kind of interesting. You score 40 points, and you don’t win,’” Arizona State head coach Herm Edwards said in his Monday press conference. “That’s generally a pretty good deal. You know, (if) you can score 40 points, you got a chance to win, and Central Michigan did a nice job of scoring some points. It just wasn’t enough.”

In their 40-3 opening win last Thursday Arizona State relied on a run game led by Wyoming transfer running back Xazavian Valladay (15-116-yards and two touchdowns), Daniyel Ngata (10-60-yards), and dual threat transfer quarterback from Florida Emory Jones (11-48-yards and two touchdowns). They also have a freshman in Tevin White that is really good. All total ASU had 267-yards rushing. Not sure they will change stripes. 

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Valladay, the Wyoming transfer, had 116-yards and two touchdowns. 

“‘Well, what is your identity?’ and I said it’s about how you win a football game,” Edwards said he explained to his team. “And whatever you have to do that, you want to do that, and I thought, for the most part, we went into the game feeling that we had an opportunity to control the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball.”

They did, they also suffered an offensive line injury with Iowa State transfer Joey Ramos now out for the season. 

“I thought the depth was good. Now, obviously, losing Joey doesn’t help it, but there’s some young guys that have been in there and what [offensive line] coach (Mike Cavanaugh) has done, he’s done a nice job of really moving guys around, playing dual positions, and that showed up for us. But we’ve got a good crew, we got a crew that has some experience. It’s like anything else, they got to play together. You know, when you think about that offense, the offensive line really, except for (junior left guard) Ladarius (Henderson) and (sophomore center) Ben (Scott), [haven’t] played together.

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Emory Jones may not be a 50 pass a game kind of quarterback.

“The receivers are young. They haven’t played together, Edwards continued. “Tight ends haven’t played together. Quarterback didn’t know any of them till after spring, so it’s a new group coming together, and I thought, for the most part, after the first quarter, they got kind of going, you know, and found a little bit. And they need to get going this week, for sure, because it’s kind of one of those games.”

Going with what, the rushing attack, a dramatic change to surprise Oklahoma State, or a balanced offense as best as the Sun Devils can do it to try and keep Oklahoma State and the deep and ferocious defensive line including ample edge rushers off balance?

That is when Edwards, definitely a pragmatic coach, comes through with a strong statistic that for a coach would rule the day and the game plan.

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Not sure Edwards is a change almost everything kind of coach.

“When you look at our record, over 200 (rushing) yards, we’re 15-1. Now, with that being said, guess what Oklahoma State’s going to do, you know, and they can do it,” Edwards said reversing fields as fast as Valladay or Jones could. “They’re going to put some guys in the box and say you’re not going to run the ball, and can you beat us throwing the ball, right? And so, that’s first thing you think about. We’ve had some good offensive line coaches and we’ve had some good running backs here since I’ve been here. We have to be able to run — that’s a little bit of our identity. That kind of is our offense a little bit along with some other things that we want to do, but we found a way to win a game, which was important.”

They’ll look to do the same in Stillwater on Saturday. Not quite as much time to make any dramatic changes as Central Michigan did. I think it will be more of the expected than the unexpected.