Kenny Dillingham got to the podium Saturday night in Tempe after Baylor had beaten Arizona State 55-19 and aimed the blame at himself, saying, "I'm letting our football team down. I am not maximizing the team that we have", and then closed the one door a lot of fans wanted opened. Asked whether a quarterback change was coming, he said, "Do I think that is even close to the realm of possibility right now? Absolutely not." Cutter Boley had just gone 25-of-43 for 304 yards with a touchdown and an interception, and described himself as "sloppy with the ball in the first and second half" with "a few poor decisions that really put us behind the eight ball." ASU was a 3.5-point home favorite. It lost by 36.
The game was gone early. Baylor led 21-3 about 16 minutes in, and a defense that had entered the week ranked 15th nationally in first-half yards allowed gave up 299 yards and 24 points before halftime, with poor tackling on the Bears' touchdown run. Owen Long, who led the FBS in tackles last season, didn't spread the blame around so much as refuse to narrow it, saying "it's on everyone. It's not just one person." ASU finished having allowed 564 total yards and having forced no turnovers at all.
The front also hasn't gotten where it was supposed to be. ASU's line averages nearly 6-foot-5 and 317 pounds but came into the season with only 25 combined Division I starts among its projected starters, and size has not yet turned into cohesion. ASU allowed two more sacks and 99 rushing yards against Baylor. The bye was supposed to be the reset. ASU got back to Tempe from the Texas A&M-to-London stretch on Sept. 20, and Dillingham said the team needed to "get accustomed to our time zone" and get some rest before practice resumed. Whatever that rest bought, none of it showed up against Baylor.
One thing did work. Reed Harris caught seven balls for 125 yards, including a 41-yarder, and Omarion Miller had his best FBS game, five catches for 85 yards and a touchdown, after the two had managed 47 combined yards over the previous two weeks. That's the first time the transfers brought in to replace Jordyn Tyson both showed up in the same game. Miller also lost a fumble, which is the whole week in miniature.
Hawai'i, Saturday, 7:30 p.m. MT, FS1
Hawai'i comes to Tempe, and the market has made ASU something like a 21-point favorite. Our simulation is more cautious, giving the Sun Devils a 68% chance to win, but nobody is pretending this is a hard game on paper.
That's exactly why the scoreboard isn't going to settle anything. ASU was favored last week too. Beating them by three touchdowns would not tell you the tackling got fixed, and losing a possession in the fourth quarter of a 20-point win wouldn't tell you it didn't. The things worth watching are smaller and more specific than the margin.
Watch whether Boley finishes the night without putting the ball on the ground or into a defender's hands. Dillingham has publicly ruled out a quarterback change; a turnover-free night against this defense is the minimum version of the staff being right. Watch the pocket on ASU's first three or four dropbacks, to see whether a reshuffled interior line keeps Boley clean without help. Watch the first two Hawai'i run series for whether ASU tackles at the point of contact instead of five yards past it. And watch whether Harris and Miller get the ball downfield together again, which would start making last week's receiving numbers look like a development rather than a stat line from a blowout.
There's urgency to that list because this is the last comfortable Saturday on the schedule. Next week ASU goes to Texas Tech as roughly a 6% underdog, then hosts Kansas State at 29% and visits BYU at 13%. Whatever doesn't get cleaned up against Hawai'i gets exposed in Lubbock.
Nothing happening elsewhere Saturday changes any of that for Arizona State. At 3.4 projected conference wins, the Sun Devils aren't in a race where someone else's result helps them. Full numbers are in the interactive guide, and the model is explained in the methodology.