Portland St. @ Arizona State preview
Sun Devil Stadium
Losing isn’t Dennis Erickson’s style so the longtime coach is changing.
The Arizona State football program is coming off two consecutive losing seasons for the first time since 1947. Another sub-.500 season and Erickson, 63, might very well be spending his last fall in Tempe.
It’s been a sudden fall since his debut year with the Sun Devils of 2007, when Arizona State went 10-3.
So changes are coming.
The offense, the aspect of the team that has lagged behind during his tenure, is getting an overhaul. New offensive coordinator Noel Mazzone, who worked with Erickson at Oregon State, was brought in to oversee it.
The offense, which averaged just 18 points a game in the Pac-10 Conference last season, is going to be put into hyper speed with an up-tempo, no-huddle style that will feature multiple-wideout formations.
The hope is to be unpredictable and explosive when the season opens Saturday at Sun Devil Stadium against Portland State.
Finding someone to run the new offense hasn’t been easy for Erickson, who didn’t name a starting quarterback until Monday, tabbing Michigan transfer Steven Threet.
The most consistent quarterback since spring practice, Threet beat out sophomore Brock Osweiler and junior Samson Szakacsy, both of whom saw time last season.
Threet, a junior, ran the scout team each week last season and faced one of the Pac-10’s best defenses in doing so.
The defense, which will be led by lineman Lawrence Guy, linebackers Vontaze Burfict and Gerald Munns and defensive back Omar Bolden, ranked first in the conference and 13th in the nation in yards allowed per game (297.6) during the 4-8 campaign of 2009.
Erickson, a former national coach of the year who owns the 11th-best active winning percentage (.667), knows he can count on the defense, although it has been wracked with injuries in preseason camp.
There is depth and talent among the front seven, and the defensive backfield, the question mark entering the season, has looked better than expected.
The Sun Devils will get a chance to unveil all of the changes against a Big Sky opponent out of the Football Championship Subdivision.
Portland State features a new head coach in Nigel Wilson, who returns to one of his coaching stops after spending the last two seasons as Nevada’s defensive coordinator.
He was brought in after three straight losing seasons which led to former NFL coach Jerry Glanville’s resignation in November. The Vikings haven’t been nationally ranked, once an annual occurrence, since 2001.
The turnaround isn’t expected to come this year as Portland State was ranked eighth in the Big Sky preseason media and coaches’ polls. The Vikings won just nine games in three years under Glanville, which was the worst three-year run for Portland State since the early 1980s.
The offense and defense each bring back five players who started at least seven games last season.
It will help with the transition under Wilson, but it will be a difficult season opener for the Vikings, who have lost by an average of nearly 33 points in their last five games against Pac-10 opponents.