Saturday night, the Sun Devils let a game they should have won slip away from them. The Rebels of UNLV came back to win in OT, thanks largely to a spectacular one-handed grab in the end zone by Phillip Payne with :18 left.
Check out some reaction from Az Sports hub. Vince Marotta thinks the decision to run the ball 36 times and pass 23 times in the game was a mistake, especially with Keegan Herring out with an injury. I agree. With the game on the line you have to stick with your strengths. And for ASU on this night, their strength was the passing game.
I also think this loss had a lot to do with the fact that the Sun Devils have No. 3 ranked Georgia coming to town, and they perhaps were looking ahead to that game a little prematurely. Teams tend to hide much of their offensive and defensive schemes in games before those against highly ranked opponents because they don’t want to give too much of their strategy away.
You’ve got to hand it to the Rebels for taking advantage of that.
Then there’s the fact that Dennis Erickson and offensive coordinator Rich Olson decided to limit Carpenters passing attack in the second half. After the Devils scored on a touchdown pass on the first drive of the 3rd quarter, Carpenter attempted only 6 more passes for the rest of the game. He even said he would have liked to have the ball in his hands when the game was on the line in the 4th quarter. Still, he handled the whole issue with the media well and did not seem to be attacking the coaching staff or ego tripping to any extent. But he was certainly disappointed to a degree in that decision.
As he was also disappointed with the way the team practiced on Thursday, the last practice before the game. Apparently, he said, “It wasn’t as good as it should have been,” and “That’s on everybody,” which shows you just how great of a leader Rudy is for this team. A leader is supposed to rally his team and get them in the right state of mind for every game. Carpenter might have slipped on ensuring that this time, but I like how he knows where his team failed and I doubt he allows it to happen again.
Bring on the Bulldogs.
