UCLA Football Preview: Kenny Dillingham Era at ASU Off to a Slow Start
The Arizona State alum's first season hasn't gone as well as hoped.

The Herm Edwards era may be over at Arizona State, but, now that it is over, something tells me that they will be paying for it for years in terms of the Sun Devils’ future won-lost records.
With Edwards out, ASU opted to bring in Oregon offensive coordinator Kenny Dillingham as the team’s permanent replacement, rather than remove the interim tag from Shaun Aguano, despite the fact that most high school coaches in the state wanted to see Aguano get the job.
In fact, Dillingham is now the youngest head coach in the FBS at just 33 years old. Like Aguano who left the high school ranks to become a Sun Devil assistant, Dillingham’s path to becoming a head coach also started in high school when he tore his ACL his senior year and he started coaching the JV team. Soon, he started moving up the coaching ladder and he hasn’t stopped yet.
This is actually his second stint with Arizona State. He served as an offensive assistant in 2014 and 2015 seasons before moving to Memphis where, after a season as a graduate assistant, he become the team’s quarterbacks and tight ends coach. In 2017, he was promoted to offensive coordinator and QB coach. After the season ended, he moved on to Auburn for the 2019 season and then to Florida State for the 2020 and 2021 seasons. Of course, he spent last season with Dan Lanning as Oregon’s offensive coordinator.
Dillingham brought former UC Berkeley offensive coordinator Beau Baldwin to ASU to be his offensive coordinator. Of course, before heading to Berkeley, Baldwin was the head coach at Eastern Washington where he won an FCS national championship in 2010 and the Eagles made it to the FCS Semifinals three other times during his tenurs. Following the 2019 season at Berkeley, he was hired to be the head coach at Cal Poly SLO. In his three years there, he won a total of just four games while losing 21. Given his lack of success at Berkeley and Cal Poly, it looks as though he isn’t particularly good at turning a program around.
This is further evidenced by the fact that Arizona State is one of the worst scoring offenses in the nation. They are ranked 124th out of 130 FBS schools in Scoring Offense with an average of 17.8 points per game. Don’t be surprised if Baldwin is shown the door at the end of this season.
ASU defensive coordinator Brian Ward joined the Sun Devils after spending last season in the same role for Washington State. Ward will run a 4-2-5 defense tomorrow against the Bruins. While he certainly improved the Washington State, the same cannot be said for the Sun Devils, at least not yet as ASU. The team is ranked 100th in Scoring Defense, 45th in Rushing Defense, 62nd in Passing Defense, 55th in Total Defense and 127th in Turnover Margin. So, his defense has not performed well this season.
The only other notable person on the coaching staff is former UCLA defensive coordfinator Dewayne Walker who is a defensive analyst.
Let’s look at the Sun Devil special teams.
Special Teams
Graduate Transfer Dario Longhetto will be the Sun Devils’ kicker. He has made 8 of 12 field goal attempts. His four misses came from 52 yards against Colorado, 31 yards and 43 yards against Washington, and 50 yards against Washington State. He has made all 16 extra points attempts. When it comes to kickoffs, 16 of his 33 kickoffs have come back out to the 25 as a touchback while only one has gone out of bounds.
While Josh Carlson and Ian Hershey have combined for 33 of the team’s 42 punts, grad transfer running back Cam Skattebo has punted five times and Longhetto has punted twice. Carlson and Hershey are pretty close. Both have punted 50 yards for their respective season longs. Hershey has a little better average, 39.6 to 37.7 yards per punt and three of his punts have landed inside the 20 compared to just one of Carlson’s. Between them, just over half of each of their punts have been fair caught.
It isn’t really clear under what circumstances Skattebo has been asked to punt but his 42.8 yard average is better than both Hershey and Carlson and his season-long is longer than any of theirs too. Meanwhile, Longhetto has averaged 43.0 yards per punt but his longest was just 49 yards.
Melquan Stovall has taken six of ASU’s eight punt returns. He’s averaging 7.67 yards per return and his longest punt return went for 19 yards. Meanwhile, Javen Jacobs has taken the other two punt returns for a total of 15 yards. His longest return was for eight yards.
Redshirt junior Elijhah Badger has returned more kickoffs than the rest of the team combined. He’s averaged 28.9 yards per return on his 20 kickoff returns with his longest going for 81 yards, making him the team’s “dangerous return man.” Stovall is ASU’s next best option there. He has returns of 24 yards and 16 yards. Michael Matus has returned two kickoffs for seven and four yards each, while Javen Jacobs has one return which went for 10 yards.
Go Bruins!!!
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