• Slug: Sports-ASU Wednesday,550

By MAURICIO CASILLAS
Cronkite News

TEMPE – The Sun Devil defense spent the whole summer preparing for Texas A&M’s up-tempo spread offense. Now the team is the midst of preparing for a completely new style of play – Cal Poly’s triple-option attack.

Cal Poly was one of the top rushing teams in FCS last season, averaging 352 yards per game. In their season opening win against Montana on Saturday, the Mustangs ran the ball 76 times for 330 yards.

“Coach (Todd Graham) and I both ran this style of offense in high school, and played it growing up in the Midwest. It was option football. We have a pretty good understanding with these styles of offenses,” Arizona State defensive coordinator Keith Patterson said. “It always starts up front. You have to destroy the line of scrimmage.”

Patterson said the key to halting the triple option is for the defense to be disciplined in their assignments.

“It’s not just about (having) one person on the dive, one person on the quarterback, one person on the pitch,” Patterson said. “You have to get multiple people to the dive, multiple people to the quarterback, multiple people to the pitch. If not, you’re going to have one-on-one open field tackles, and if you miss a tackle, all of a sudden you’ve got big plays.”

The Sun Devil defense will take what it learns from Cal Poly, and implement it the next week against New Mexico. The Aggies are also a triple option team.

“It sets up pretty good, I think,” Patterson said. “You’ll get carry over, no doubt, and then we’ll switch gears again here in week four, and get back to what we’re more familiar in defending.”

RECALIBRATING THE OFFENSE: Against Texas A&M, Arizona State quarterback Mike Bercovici was sacked nine times and threw for only 199 yards, his lowest output in the four games he’s started at ASU. The 17 points the offense was able to muster were the lowest amount in the Todd Graham era.

Offensive coordinator Mike Norvell acknowledged the team didn’t adjust well enough to Texas A&M’s blitzes and that they need to learn from their mistakes as they approach the Cal Poly game on Saturday.

“We were on the road in a hostile environment,” Norvell said. “We played a good defense that had some quality players, but any time you’re on a big stage like that, you can’t do things that hurt yourself.”

Norvell said Texas A&M defensive ends Myles Garrett and Daeshon Hall were able to anticipate the Sun Devil offense’s snap count and make things difficult for Bercovici.

“I think there were times in that game where they definitely timed us up. I put our guys in a situation with probably not enough variation (in the snap count) in that game,” Norvell said. “We did have some variation, but they probably got too much into a rhythm of where we were at throughout the course of the game.”

While Norvell said the team is looking to correct its mistakes, they are not dwelling on the season opening loss.

“There’s nothing fun about it. You try to learn from those experiences,” Norvell said. “I’m not focused on last week anymore. (I) pretty much got past that Sunday night when we started taking a look at Cal Poly. “