Arizona State's Herm Edwards Preparing as If Cal Game Will Be Played

Sun Devils coach holds Monday press conference following tough loss to USC

Arizona State coach Herm Edwards held his weekly press conference on Monday as his team tries to regroup from its tough loss to USC and prepares for Saturday night’s home game against Cal.

Edwards does not know whether the Cal-ASU game will be played, but is getting ready as if the game will be played. Golden Bears head coach Justin Wilcox said Tuesday he expects to find out by Wednesday whether Berkeley Public Health will allow Cal to play the game. Cal’s game against Washington this past Saturday was canceled after a Golden Bears player tested positive for COVID-19 and an entire position group was quarantined for contact tracing.

“I think that the word I hear is that they are prepared to play,” Edwards said of Cal. “We’re preparing to play them and that’s all we can do and until someone tells us anything different that’s where it’s at right now. I’ve heard nothing that we’re not playing so we’re going to prepare to play.”

**Herm Edwards Monday press conference:

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Edwards understands that the virus is likely to affect the college football season, and he is “nervous.”

“I’m crossing fingers, right?” he said. “I think everyone is as you look back and understand that the virus is heading in the wrong direction. What that does to us, we don’t know. All we’re going to do is every week prepare to play. We have already seen that there have been some cancellations in our conference as well as others, we’re just hoping that it doesn’t hit us, affect us and if it does we’ll have to deal with it.

“We’ve said it from the start, we’re playing against two opponents: the opponent you game plan for every week and that other opponent that you cannot see and it’s the virus. And it’s out there and it’s headed, as I said earlier, in the wrong direction right now.”

Edwards expects Cal to be excited about playing when the Bears come to Tempe, Ariz., for their season opener – if it is played.

“You know they’re a veteran team, they have a lot of returners coming back on the defensive side as well as the offensive side of it,” Edwards said. “They’ll be excited about playing, I do know that, when you’ve had a bye already, and you have an opportunity to play they will be excited about playing. We have to be excited about another opportunity to play, this will be the first time we play at home and we’ll actually have a couple fans in there. That will be kind of nice to see and to hear that the fans that are able to attend our games, so that will be a different feeling than we had last week when there was no one in the stands.”

The Sun Devils must shake off the negative feeling that followed the 28-27 loss to USC.

“We’re back in the mode of trying to regroup, it started with the players yesterday,” Edwards said. “You can imagine how they felt, along with the coaching staff, but we have to put that behind us now and move forward. A lot of learning moments and teaching moments that we can use for an opportunity to get better as a football team, so I think we’re looking forward to do that this week.”

The Sun Devils held a 13-point lead over USC with less than three minutes left, but a series of events led to 28-27 USC victory.

One of the issues for Arizona State is the injury status of wide receiver Frank Darby, who missed virtually all of the game against USC. That had an effect on the relatively few number of passes ASU attempted Saturday.

“We’re hopeful that (Darby) can get back this week,” Edwards said. “As far as the game went, it was a game of really us wanting the ball a little bit more. Jayden (Daniels) only threw 23 passes, so going into that game we felt that to help us and give us the best chance to win, we wanted to be a balanced offense. 

"Obviously taking time off the clock when we had opportunities, well how do you do that? Run the ball consistently, and we were able to do that. We wanted to take as much time off the clock as we could and that didn’t turn out to be the case. 

"The fact that we missed opportunities to get off the field on defense on some third downs and some critical fourth downs situations, we drop an interception that allowed them to score on one drive we mishandled an onside kick that allowed them more plays, two fourth down opportunities to get off the field and we do not. So, our whole mindset was to try to slow the game down by running the ball some and being efficient in the passing game, and then when Frank went down, some young players had to play and we only threw it 23 times and you’re not going to win with 23 passes. It’s going to look like that to be quite honest right, when you only throw it 23 times.”

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