What’s your game plan for ASU at Utah?

Utah D gets 10 sacks, Utes score 40+ pts, No injuries, Freak blizzard and hail storm erupts over the visitors section.

Defense: Just play sound defense. Keep the plays in front of you so we don’t give up a big play. Wrapping up will be the key to stop Eno Benjamin. His O-line hasn’t been that great, but he can force missed tackles and has break away speed. Daniels is a freshman QB so Scalley should keep a lot of pre snap motion in the defense so he can’t get a read on what Utah is trying to do. Force him to make mistakes.

Defensively, contain the run first and foremost. Second, pressure the QB. In their only loss (colorado) they gave up 3 sacks. ASU has allowed 16 sacks. We should have plenty of pressure on daniels. He’s evasive but I imagine lloyd or bernard will spy him most plays.

Offensively, they are vulnerable in the air. Run enough to keep them honest and have to account for moss. Play action, and screens/lateral to moss can be big for us here. They sell out to stop the run and are 2nd in conference against the run (utes are #1). Only 7th in pass def. Tyler will have time to throw and his efficiency numbers make this a bad match up for them. They give up a WBR of 130 on avg and 262 yd/game.

I think we match up well against them. It will likely be a low scoring outing but I don’t see how they get many points on the board. The best Def they have faced was MSU and only eeked out 10pts, we have a stronger def all around than MSU statistically. I suspect ASU will probably be in the 10-14 range and utes can get by that just sticking to what has been working well so far.

Offesne – We should put up points against them – I think this game is more about our defense vs. their offense.  As mentioned – they are clearly vulnerable to the pass – they could get no pressure on WSU QB, at some points he was standing flat footed.  Their tackling was also poor, I expect ZM to get lots of yards after contact. 

Defense – 3 keys – be consistent as past games on run defense – I dont think we will maintain 2.4 yds per carry, but if we can keep it <3.5 should be OK.  Keep Aiuk to 1-2 big plays – noting that a lot of his yardage at WSU seemed to be been after the catch or blown zone coverage, if secondary tackles like they normally does we whould be OK.  Contain Daniels.

Specials teams – dont leave it up to special teams….

4th area – penalties.  we HAVE to keep drive extending / drive killing penalties to a minimum.   And pray that we get the elusive “reasonable” pac 12 officiating crew.  They are the jackalope of officials, but I still believe it exsits out there somewhere.  

Score

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Points

Paraphrasing Abe Lemons: The idea is to have more points at the end of the game than the other guy has. It don’t (sic) much matter how you do it. Ok, that was basketball and Abe was a lovable smartass. I’m just not love able. I want to watch the game and see how we, the good guys, do it.