IMO – the key to tonight’s game is

I’ve said this before, but contain is key IMO. We’ve had some defensive issues staying home on the edges, allowing teams to make big gains outside. We must stay in our defensive lanes and not give up the edge to Daniels. 

Contain, win TOs, loud crowd, slow the run game, and win the mental part of the game to get Daniels flustered. Utes keep drives on offense moving to win this one considering the talent/experience differential on ASU’s defense against Utah’s young offense. Rising is showing nice growth. Ute Oline needs to show they can handle ASU’s athleticism and pressure. ASU will be by far the best defense Utah faces this year. Will be nice to see the Utes play back at home.

To piggy back on some of the keys already stated, my big fear is forcing ASU to 3rd and long and Daniels scrambling for a first down. If where locked down in man, we also need to be aware of where he is at all times.

Yes, make ASU try to win without JD’s run yards on broken plays.

Setting the edge is hard enough on run plays. On broken pass plays it gets so much harder because so many defenders drop back from the LOS and the pass rush desperately works to get the QB. Into the play there becomes a lot of open space with few defenders, then of course, QBs are faster than DLs.

A spy means taking a defender out of the pass plays to focus on keeping the QB behind the LOS because he really is not key to the pass rush. The other 10 need to step up more given to the loss of a defender in coverage. With a QB like JD the tradeoff is likely good because the pass game may not benefit as much as the loss of his broken pass play run yards. The spy is actually an aggressive defensive strategy. It will be interesting to see Whitt’s and Scalley’s strategy.