ASU’s Edwards not revealing much on QB battle
LOS ANGELES – Arizona State coach Herm Edwards spent time answering the obvious questions regarding the Sun Devils’ quarterback situation Wednesday during Pac-12 Media Day.
Nine of the 12 schools in the conference have returning starters at that position and two others have transfers expected to step right in. The Sun Devils are the lone school with a quarterback battle.
Of course Edwards wasn’t going to tip his hand as to who has emerged from his pool of four candidates — returning backup Dillon Sterling Cole and true freshmen Jayden Daniels, Joey Yellen and Ethan Long.
“Very competitive,” he said of the quartet. “High school players now are way more advanced than 15 years ago because of their ability to be in involved in the 7-on-7 leagues and their ability to understand concepts and that goes to the coaches that coach them.”
“You get them now as far as the passing goes, and how to throw the ball. They’re very comfortable doing that.”
The speed of the game changes. The competition changes. That’s shocking to some of them because all of a sudden the defense can run much faster and you can’t outrun everybody.”
Edwards understands the focus on that position and isn’t in a rush to make a decision.
“We’ll figure it out,” he said. “We’ve got time. We don’t play for a while. It’ll be fun, though, because all those kids did a great job of really competing in the spring, and you guys watched our spring. We were down some numbers, so we couldn’t do exactly what we like to do, but going forward, as we get depth on our roster, you’re really going to see spring a whole lot different.”
Edwards sat on the stage in front of the large gallery while the players sat at separate interview areas in the back of the room. Edwards was his usual relaxed, comfortable self in front of a microphone. He answered questions on a wide variety of topics. Among those his take on the Pac-12 preseason poll, in which his team was picked to finished third in the South. He gave the expected answer.
“That’s always difficult for people to pick. If I worried about what people said I wouldn’t leave my house,” he said. “I just coach a football team. That’s all I worry about.”
Edwards was accompanied by senior offensive lineman Cohl Cabral and junior running back Eno Benjamin.
Cabral, entering his third year as a starter, likes being the underdog.
“That’s OK if people underestimate us. It will make it that much sweeter if we can win,” he said.
The marquee performers in the conference were all on hand. Among those were quarterbacks Justin Herbert of Oregon and K.J. Costello of Stanford.
Second-year Arizona coach Kevin Sumlin brought quarterback Khalil Tate and running back J.J. Taylor. Unlike the other teams who will be headed back to their respective campuses on Thursday, the Wildcats returned to Wednesday night so they can start fall camp first thing Thursday morning
Arizona is the first Pac-12 team to officially kick off the season with an Aug. 24 contest at Hawaii.
“You got to excuse us if we’re not here completely because we actually play what some people call zero week,” Sumlin said. “It’s actually minus one week.”