Arizona State: Head Coach Upgrade or Not?

May 29, 2023 by Staff

When the 2023 college football season begins, 24 teams will have a different head coach on the sideline than the one they had at the start of the 2022 season. Arizona State, which opens August 31 against FCS member Southern Utah, is one of those teams.

Georgia Tech, however, will actually have the same guy - Brent Key - who led them through the last 8 games of the 2022 season. And Mississippi State returns Zach Arnett, the assistant who was promoted to replace Mike Leach after his tragic death on December 12.

The 2023 season kicks off on August 26 for 14 teams. The remaining 119 teams will start over the Labor Day holiday weekend.

Between now and then, we will dive a little deeper into some of those head coaching changes and today we start at the top of the list, alphabetically, by looking at Arizona State.

We believe the team upgraded from its previous situation, and has found a better fit for the program, by replacing Herm Edwards with Kenny Dillingham. Just don't expect the collective breaths of fresh air to translate into major overnight improvement. In fact, FanDuel's over/under win total is currently 4.5 for the Sun Devils.

The Sun Devils had to exit the Herm Edwards era. He was fired just three games in to the 2022 season when a 30-21 upset loss at home to Eastern Michigan dropped the Sun Devils to 1-2. The move had as much to do with over-all sentiment surrounding the coach, as it did wins and losses, as the school came under investigation for hosting recruits during a "dead period" after the Covid-19 pandemic season.

Shaun Aguano was named interim head coach and went 2-7. Aguano had been hired out of Chandler High School to coach running backs in 2019 and had no previous college coaching experience.

They waited until November 27th to hire Dillingham, a 2013 ASU graduate who began coaching at age 17 when he tore his ACL at Chaparral High School in Scottsdale. After graduation, he became an offensive assistant with the Sun Devils for 2014 and 2015. He then bounced around the country with several schools including Florida State and Auburn as offensive coordinator and QB coach. He served in those capacities last season at Oregon which was 4th in the PAC-12 in total offense, passing offense and scoring offense. In those same categories, ASU ranked 8th in total offense, 9th in passing offense and 8th in scoring offense.

Even though Dillingham has no previous head coaching experience, this would appear to be an upgrade.

Looking back, we intimated that Edwards was a strange hire when it happened in 2018. Athletic director, Ray Anderson, was Edwards' former agent and all Anderson wanted to do was hire his client to replace Todd Graham while keeping the staff intact. Graham was fired on November 26, and Edwards was hired a week later, even though he hadn't coached a down of football in any capacity since he last served as head coach of the NFL's Kansas City Chiefs from 2006-2008. His only time as a college coach was spent at San Jose State from 1987-1989 where he was in charge of the defensive backs. His all-time NFL head coaching record is 54-74. He left the New York Jets to join the Chiefs amid a tampering charge, and was fired three years later by Kansas City.

Graham was 7-5 (6-3 in the PAC-12) when he was fired, but he and his staff stayed on for ASU's Sun Bowl game versus N.C. State and lost 52-31. His final records with the Sun Devils from 2012 to 2017 were 46-32 overall, 31-23 in the PAC-12, and 2-3 in bowl games. Ten former assistants under Graham are currently FBS head coaches.

Edwards finished with records of 26-20 over-all and 17-14 in the PAC-12. His won-lost records were .024 percentage points below Graham's over-all and .026 points lower in PAC-12 games.

We should note that Graham would go on to have bigger problems. He was 11-11 in two seasons at Hawaii (2020-2021), but resigned amid allegations that included verbal abuse, incompetence and favoritism, from former and current players. After a large number of players on the 2021 roster - 19 in all - had entered the transfer portal, details were presented at a Hawaii state senate hearing on January 8th and he resigned a week later. A December 6, 2021 article on SFGate.com brought the allegations to light. Hawaii was 6-7 in 2021 and had secured an invitation to play Memphis in the Hawaii Bowl, but that game was canceled, reportedly due to Covid issues in the Hawaii program. However, the SGGate.com article alleged its investigation concluded that a "not insignificant contingent of players" had no desire to play another game for Graham. As one current player told SFGATE, “A lot of players want him fired, especially the starters.”

Arizona State, along with rival Arizona, became a PAC-12 member in 1978. The Sun Devils won outright titles in 1986 and 1996, and shared the title with USC in 2007. The conference added a conference championship game in 2011 and ASU lost at home to Stanford in its one and only appearance in 2013 which came under Graham who was named PAC-12 Coach of the Year.