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The only podcast covering all things Arizona State athletics! We bleed maroon and gold, and love talking about the Sun Devils no matter what sport.
Tom Hardon (00:01)
Welcome in to another episode of Echo from the Buttes. I'm your host Tom Harden, standing in for David Hellman, who is off covering the Dallas Cowboys today. With me, I have Austin Bundy and Andrew Hazlett. And guys, Big 12 schedule is officially open with a win. It's the Sun Devils' first win in a conference opener since 2017. And I gotta say, it feels good to be 1-0 in the conference.
for the first time in a while. What did you guys take away from that yesterday?
Austen Bundy (00:35)
I feel like it was a bit of a confidence booster to a degree. means, like you said, good to have 1-0 in the conference for the first time since I was a junior at ASU. ⁓ So I liked what I saw from the team, but there were still plenty of concerns. There's still plenty that I think they need to work on. ⁓ But overall, it felt nice to have ASU finally win a walk-off game as opposed to having themselves be walked off on.
Andrew Hayslett (01:05)
Yeah, absolutely.
I go back to last year, yes the Sun Devils did have a big run in the conference but they lost their first game on the road to Texas Tech, a different Texas team that was thought to be really good at the time. And what we saw is the Sun Devils had to win pretty much every other game to get back to the, to get to the Big 12 Championship. Now that the Sun Devils are 1-0 in conference play, it feels like
It's still an uphill way to get there, but the hill isn't a mountain. And I'd rather climb up a small hill than a mountain.
Tom Hardon (01:48)
It's much more manageable when you get that first one under your belt. And to me, it feels great that we have a kicker that we can trust in those clutch moments. Jesus Gomez, I can't say enough about him and how he carried the team on his left foot yesterday. Four field goals, one extra point, accounted for half of the team's points. And you can't understate the importance of special teams. ⁓
It's always going to be the afterthought when it comes to a game plan, but having that ticker in your back pocket is an undeniable advantage to us over last year.
Andrew Hayslett (02:27)
Yeah, absolutely. I go back to one of the first spring practices. Kenny Dillingham and the scrum was saying.
We're going to be going for it a lot on fourth downs this year." And then he saw Jesus's head kind of just drop. And then he said, unless you can make it, Jesus. And Jesus said, yeah, I got you coach. And then the whole team, Dillingham said went crazy. And I'd have to imagine it was similar to the scene we saw on Saturday night. Just whole team going crazy. Jesus, his confidence is 10 out of 10. I think he's
He's probably one of the most confident kickers in the country because he's done it before, made kicks as long as 57 yards.
Kind of going off on that, we saw Kenny Dillingham, I think he went for it twice on fourth down and did not convert, if memory serves me correctly. I don't know what those yardages would have been for kicks. So maybe in the future, now that he knows Jesus is good, he can walk the walk, as we've seen with this walk-off kick, he might trust Jesus a little more.
more
and go for it on fourth down less. I'm a conservative guy in terms of when you kick and when you not kick. I like kicking more than going for it on fourth down four times than not. I know you guys are a little bit more aggressive than I am in terms of that. Maybe I'd like to see Kenny be a little bit more conservative in that department and I think this could make him a little bit more conservative. I don't know what you guys think.
Austen Bundy (04:13)
Yeah, feel like
Tom Hardon (04:14)
cool.
Austen Bundy (04:14)
if
you're going to take the points, take the points. You've got a guy like Jesus who can make those types of kicks. I I'm not saying he's going win the Lugroza this year, but I don't think we've felt more confident about a kicker since we had Zane Gonzalez out there. So if you're going to be aggressive, be aggressive in the right situations. But when you know you can get three points on a drive, take the points every time. mean, all you're doing is making your score go up. If you trust your defense especially, like,
take the points. It's as simple as that.
Tom Hardon (04:44)
The Devils were one out of two on fourth downs yesterday. The ⁓ failure to convert came late in the third quarter. It was on a fourth and one from the Baylor 18. ⁓ Udo had a rush for no gain going up the middle. Turnover on downs thankfully didn't come back to haunt the Devils as that ensuing series was Abney's interception, which from what I heard from fans on the ground in Waco, it really helped shift the momentum.
even if temporarily in Arizona State's favor. I know from my vantage point, as soon as Abney came down with that interception, we just started going crazy. We felt, you know, okay, we've got this, you this is, we got a three point lead. Now let's make some point, you know, get some points off of it. And ultimately, you know, ultimately points did come off of that drive. The drive carried over into the fourth quarter and that came on on the foot of Gomez again, his 33 yard fuel goal, his.
third field goal of the day, which put the Devils up 16 to 10 at the time. And that leads me into my point on what I saw in the offense. And if I'm being completely honest, I'm not sure what I saw from the offense. I saw some great running early in the game. I saw
great ability by Sam to spread the ball around to different receivers. So had seven different receivers come down with it with at least one catch. And as the Shaman Mataire fan club, we are very happy about that seeing Mataire's six catches. But what really stuck with me is getting down into the red zone and then not being able to complete out drives.
Especially getting down inside the five and having to settle for a field goal to me I'm not sure what it comes down to whether it's just not just the plays being drawn up or We saw some of the some of the running style from From relief where he's not exactly Running to contacts. I believe you guys were making the point earlier
He's trying to dance around too much and avoid contact and getting a little too much east-west, not getting enough north-south. Did you guys see the same thing, same things as I was just talking about there?
Austen Bundy (07:12)
Yeah, feel like, like you said, were talking about before, Relique is a strong back. He's the type of dude that can get those two to three yards on short down situations. And there were too many times where, like you said, he went east to west, he was looking and dancing around for the holes, he didn't lower his shoulder and find the contact to try and get those short yardage situations. mean, there were too many times, even on like a second down where...
they needed maybe five or more and instead of getting the two or three that he could by just taking a dive through the defenders, he kept trying to find the hole and try and find the space along the edge and he would end up only getting maybe a yard or barely back to the line of scrimmage and that, I mean, that just doesn't help your offense in that situation when you could have had a third and manageable by getting a couple yards by taking the dive. ⁓
Andrew Hayslett (07:57)
Okay.
Austen Bundy (08:01)
Otherwise overall for the offense, feel like they had a more balanced attack. I mean, I can, hear you when you're saying like, it was not as effective as I feel like we've seen them execute before, but like, it's one of those things where a win is a win. And like, if it was working at the time, great run with it. the running game was doing enough in order to give Sam the option downfield. And the fact that somebody like Derek Eusebio came out and had a breakout game, ⁓ we,
think since the U of A game last year, I think we were all waiting for this guy to show up and give Jordan Tyson a little bit of a break, especially downfield. ⁓ I think that fourth quarter play where he got wide open downfield for that, ⁓ was that the go ahead score or were we already up at that point?
Tom Hardon (08:51)
That
led to the tying score. We were down by one of that. It was the go-head score, sorry. We were down by one. That got us up by seven points after the two-point conversion.
Austen Bundy (09:07)
Yeah, right. that drive. seeing someone like Eusebio be able to come out and have his breakout game in a clutch moment like that was definitely encouraging, especially since we've all been looking to guys like Jalen Moss and elsewhere to take that pressure off of Tyson. ⁓ But now you've got two deep threats, and I feel like the rest of the Big 12 is going to have to take notice that if it's not going to be Tyson down one sideline, Eusebio is going to potentially beat some DBs down the middle now.
Andrew Hayslett (09:34)
Yeah absolutely, you a saveo, ⁓ solid player. He had those two catches, he had a pair runs as well that looked really solid. Going back to Reliq Brown, maybe I'm just so used to watching Cam Scataboo just plow through guys, run over guys, seek out content. Maybe Reliq Brown's closer to the average guy than we've...
what we think but yeah it certainly felt that he was trying to juke out guys too much and go east west and not go north south. We'll see how he can just evolve and practice. It'll be interesting for me to see who's the number one running back this week with Kyson.
getting healthier. We'll see Kanyu Udo I would imagine as well. He had that one game and we haven't we didn't see much of him against Texas State and we only saw him for seven times on the ground for only 19 yards or 18 yards rather. This this game it's
it from when the Sun Devils brought him in and having this little production is just a surprise to me. He just hasn't been what we what we as a whole thought he was going to be. But on the receiving front, I think ⁓ what. ⁓
I Eusebio is what ASU thinks Jaren Hamilton is. I think every game they've tried to throw Hamilton one or two deep balls and I don't think they've converted yet on either one.
I saw one in Spring Ball that they converted but nothing else since but Eusebio they've been able to do that twice now and it's worked going back to the U of A game maybe Eusebio is this this guy that is
who we think someone else is. It'll be interesting to see if they can, if they still wind up feeding the ball to Hamilton, will he be able to make those catches? I don't know, but it's still nice for me to see, they're taking deep shots down the field. ⁓
I also thought Malik McLean is going to have breakout game. He wound up having a few catches I think. Just kind of a no show again. moving forward maybe you as Savio's this guy who.
Is a compliment to Tyson. I would I would think Jalen Moss comes back this week. I don't know. We'll see what Kenny Dillingham says Monday. This is gonna come out Monday. So probably late at sometime after this and then we'll see if moss is back at practice this this week practicing in full Because he was expect Kenny last Monday said yeah unless something crazy happens. He's gonna be back and then he had
some sort of illness of some sort that kept them out. And now that we...
Now that he's probably hopefully healed up from that illness, you never want to be sick. That's just something you don't want to be. Maybe he can finally get going again, come back and be this guy who he he could be because there's there's a hand, a lot of guys on that receiving room, McLean, Noble Johnson, Jared Hamilton.
A lot of guys with high expectation those transfer receivers And none of them have really produced so far it's been Levitt it's been Jermain Moutere a little bit it's been the running backs catching some balls as well and now you have Savio but
from the guys that were supposed to take over these wide receiver, wide receiver 2 and wide receiver 3 positions, we just haven't seen them.
Tom Hardon (14:03)
speaking of Jordan Tyson, ⁓ I think to me what I feared was going to start happening is teams are really starting to shut him down. And I saw that in large part last night. Targeted 12 times, yes he did bring down seven catches, but only for 43 yards. And it's a ⁓ big drop from what we've seen in the non-conference slate.
Andrew Hayslett (14:04)
Thanks for your time.
Tom Hardon (14:33)
only getting just over six yards per catch. He did find the end zone for Sam's only passing touchdown in the game, but do you guys see it as well? Or is this something that is going to be standard for the rest of season as we go up against the rest of Big 12?
Austen Bundy (14:53)
I think you're going to start seeing this more often. mean, he is the best player on offense there besides Sam. ⁓ It's just natural he would get double teamed. It's natural that that option would be taken away, but it doesn't take away from his talents. mean, for me looking at Tyson, the stat line should not matter more than when.
he actually catches the ball and I mean he caught the ball in the end zone. That's when you need him to catch the ball is when you're in the red zone when you need to score. That's when he needs to come down with it the most and he did. So as long as he's not taken away as a weapon full time, as long as he's still...
providing an opportunity to score. I do not believe it's going to hinder ASU's offense as much as we think, especially if they're going to have other options like a Derek Eusebio, who is going to find those first downs that you need to get down the field. If the running game is still going to be able to get you down the field, close enough to where then someone like Tyson can get open on a route or get open in the end zone, then I don't think it's going to impact
⁓ as much negatively as i think people think it might ⁓ now if this becomes a situation where you get stuck in a one-dimensional offense and the running game's not doing anything ⁓ and you're forcing it to Jordan each time because you're down by ten points in the third quarter or something that's when i think it could become problematic because if Kenny does not have the ability to
game plan or to play call around Tyson to have other options for Sam to go to, that's when the offense is going to stall out. So if he's not building plays or building packages around other weapons and he's only focusing on Tyson when you're getting in tight spaces, that's where you open yourself up to extreme vulnerability and defenses all they need to do is take away one piece off the chessboard and you're in no man's land.
Andrew Hayslett (16:52)
Yeah, I agree what you said, Austin. If this is Jordan Tyson's war and this happens a few weeks out of the year, I think the Sun Devils are gonna be fine. But if it becomes a trend where this is the average or the median, whatever you want to call it,
There's a lot of caution flags up in the air. I think for me, I'd take this week by week, see what they can do, see if they can get those other guys I just talked about a moment ago involved, get some other tight ends as well. And for me, it's just can the Sun Devils get Jordan Tyson to keep doing crazy things? whether if it's some,
one handed catch or acrobatic catch or hurling a dude, that's where Jordan Tyson's best. And if you can just get him to do those things, Jordan Tyson will produce a hundred yard gains because he'll have a 20 yard catch here, an 18 yard catch there and so on and so forth. And with that said, I'm not concerned yet.
Tom Hardon (18:12)
And I think it's also it also speaks to just how much of the defense's attention he commands when you're seeing the rest of the receiving corps account for as many catches as they did on Saturday. I'll run through the numbers from this week. We talked about Eusebio, two catches for 78 yards. Matej are six catches for 55 yards. Relique Brown had three catches for 23. Relique McLean had
Andrew Hayslett (18:30)
Thank
Tom Hardon (18:42)
one catch for 11, same with Cam Harpole. Kyson Brown had a couple catches but ended up being a net zero. But my point remains that Tyson, if he is drawing two defenders on almost every passing play, that's going to open up the rest of the receiving game. And I think we caught a glimpse of what Sam is able to do. I, for one, think that he is.
starting to come back into his own. think the first three games are a little bit of an aberration. I think that now that he's been able to spread the ball around, I think we will be able to see more of that in the game plan. And I think that not only Kenny, but Marcus Arroyo will trust Sam to work through his progression and get the ball to the right player at the right time. Just look at Eusebio's deep play over the middle. He got lost in the defense.
Nobody accounted for him. He's just sitting there in no man's land wide open and Sam hit him in stride. 61 yard play and that's what I'm looking to see when it comes down to Tyson getting double covered is who is left unaccounted for by the defense.
And when it comes down to defense, if we're going to talk about the Sun Devil defense, to me, I think that they performed admirably for the first three quarters of the game.
You saw the grind really start to get to the guys in the fourth quarter. And but to me, that's a byproduct of just the extreme amount of injuries that the defense has been having to deal with. No number of guys stepping up and really taking on those starting rules. I love seeing Keishon Elliott flying all over the field with 10 tackles. Jordan Crook had nine, Boogie Wilson had eight.
forced three turnovers, ⁓ one fumble each on Baylor's opening drives of each half, and then Keith Appney's interception. I think that the defense really kept the game in check, even if the offense really couldn't pull away as it looked like they could have and should have done on a few occasions.
Austen Bundy (21:04)
I think Kenny Dillingham kind of put it perfectly in his post game conference, post game press conference where he was like, you win the turnover game three nothing, but you have to win that close of a game. Like that's something you don't want to have to go through again. I you'll take it in this situation, but you don't want to have to play that type of game again. I give that the defense, a lot of credit for getting three turnovers, especially with how injured they were. But like you said, you could see the fatigue in the fourth quarter. It was definitely a slog.
think
the clock just happened to work out in their favor at the end there ⁓ because they got burned over the top again. Like it's the same thing. This is the third time we've seen since the Peach Bowl that the defense gets burned over the top on a big play.
the safeties aren't covering the guy coming across the middle and it just ends up burning them. Tackling was subpar on that play, but I mean, like I said, the clock happened to work out for them because if there was going to be a play where they get burned and Baylor scores quickly, you would want it there because you still had a minute and a half, more than a minute and a half to go down the field and do what you needed to do.
Andrew Hayslett (22:11)
Yeah, for me it's hard to give the defense or the offense for that matter are great on this game because I saw a lot of good and I saw a lot of bad. But like you said Austin, a lot of takeaways for three, which is you're probably not going to get that majority of your games on the schedule, but.
when they weren't taking the ball away and I think that another they forced to turn over on downs as well but when they weren't doing that they pretty much I think all but one or two of the Baylor drives stale out points so it was either boom or bust kind of what I predicted going into this game is
They either make a huge play or they let off points, which is... It's... The takeaways are great, but allowing points is concerning because points is how you... How the ball game is scored at the end of the day. So... I don't know what I would give the defense this grade. And then another thing is that...
I don't know if it's just scheming at this point for Brian Ward. It's just, we saw a lot of chunk plays in both the Mississippi State before the big play and this Baylor game that the defense was giving up. ⁓ here's six yards here, seven yards there, 12 yard first down here. Just play after play, just these.
Offenses in these two-minute situations is taking chunk play after chunk play after chunk play So that's not I'd like to see the Sun Devils do a bit better. That's something on that if I'm Kenny Dillingham having the guys go through this week in one of the 11 and on 11 periods is Let's have offense and defense do the two-minute drill see who comes out best
I think that we saw that last weekend practice with the twos, that isn't the ones. So that's something I'd like to see happen is just get those 11 on 11 situations and in a two minute drill, see what the defense can do to just stop a hot offense. That's something I'd like to see the team work on.
Austen Bundy (24:55)
I do give them credit though for getting the Sawyer Robertson. There was a point in the game where I thought if they can't get a sack, I don't think they're going to win this game. then late in the game, late in the second half, they got a sack on Sawyer Robertson. I thought, okay, now that they're finally getting through to him, I feel like there's going to be a little bit of a momentum shift here. There's going to be a little bit of blood in the water smelt, if you will. And after that, like I think they did do what they needed to except for on that, that play where they got burned over the middle in the past. But the pressure was there.
I liked what I saw from the pass rush. was the coverage I think was the problem, giving up the chunk yardage each time, but otherwise I give them lot of credit for how banged up they were.
Tom Hardon (25:36)
The coverage was something that we talked about leading up to this game as being the real opportunity and the real unknown with how the backups are going to step up and where the holes would be apparent. to Andrew's point, the defense did force Baylor to punt twice. One of them came at the end of the first half when Baylor was already going to be getting the ball to open the second half or when ASU was getting the ball to open the second half.
Andrew Hayslett (25:37)
Okay.
Tom Hardon (26:06)
And so you can kind of take that as you will. Maybe Baylor was just kind of chucking up as pin them deep, ⁓ pin the devil's deep. Don't give the opportunity for bookending scores. But then Arizona State also forced a three and out in the third quarter. No yards gained by Baylor on that drive. So there were wimpses ⁓ of what we wanted to see out of the defense on a regular basis. ⁓
at the end of day, team just got ground down and played as well as they could have given what they were going up against. As I mentioned, did like how Keyshawn Elliott was a consistent presence. He had a sack as part of his stat line. CJ Fight also with a sack. getting a lot of disruption and five tackles for loss. I think that ⁓ for
as banged up as the defense was, I'm very pleased with how the devil's defense stood up.
but we will be really keen to see how this defense stacks up in a short week with TCU coming up on Friday. And TCU is a very similar team to what we just saw out of Baylor. can we see Magic in a Bottle two weeks in a row? the defense hold serve enough to...
you have some room for the offense. Austin, I'll start with you. What do you need to see out of this defense on a short week to be able to produce a similar result?
Austen Bundy (27:49)
I would like to say the easy answer is improve the coverage. I mean, that's about as simple as you can make it. ⁓ If we've seen anything from TC, I mean, if you go back to the game against UNC, they were all over the place. Their wide receivers were getting open in places you didn't think you could get open in the middle of the field. So that's where I feel like Kenny needs to look at the tape and tell his guys, I don't see where you play zone at all against
TCU I feel like you need to be right up against it all each wide receiver you got to play man the entire time and Do your best to limit penalties if you got to drape yourself over him at some point and prevent the pass do it, but it's it's just one of those things where
you need to buy time for the pass rush because if you can pressure their quarterback into making mistakes, I mean, it's one of those like, of course that's what you need to do, but it's execution. And if you buy enough time for the pass rush, everything else comes together on defense. ⁓
I really would like to see them get to the quarterback at least twice in the first half. You need to be able to rattle him a little bit. You need to cause the head coach to think about changing up the game plan a little bit. ⁓
I want to see the coverage tighten up so that the pass rush has enough time to do its job and pressure the quarterback into mistakes, throwing balls early, throwing them high. I don't want to necessarily get them out of the pocket because we know the dude has legs. ⁓ But I think this is potentially going to be a shootout in Tempe. I'm glad the game is in Tempe because that's probably one of the only advantages ASU is going to get against this team. ⁓
It's not trying to be a naysayer, but I am not looking forward to Friday's game. I don't have a good feeling about it. It's the same thing that I felt with the Mississippi State game. ⁓ It's one of these where if ASU pulls it off, great. That's what they needed, and they're going to prove us wrong that they are still the team that we knew they could be coming out of last season. ⁓ But I'm...
feeling entirely optimistic around a short week with a banged up defense and an offense that needed some unconventional tactics in order to beat Baylor.
Andrew Hayslett (30:14)
Yeah, I'm in agreement with you, Austin. After kind of watching, but not really watching TCU and SMU just tarry each other's defenses down, I think that could be similar to what we see Friday night. Like you said, Austin, we just see an offensive shootout.
And right now with the Sun Devils offense, I don't like the Sun Devils chances to win this game at this point. The Arizona State offense needs to score a lot and we haven't really seen that from them. They only put like...
20 something points against Mississippi State and 27 against Baylor. I'm not going to really count the other two games because they're lesser opponents. No disrespect them, but that's just what they are. I need to see.
Arizona State put up at least 30 if they're going to win this game, I think. And if Arizona State wins this game, for me, it's going to be a, got to be a defensive game, which is not something I think will happen.
Austen Bundy (31:37)
I think
you need at least 40 to be TCU. I don't think 30 gets the job done. I think you're going to need at least a 40 burger to get over that hump.
Tom Hardon (31:37)
Okay.
And you know, defense really isn't a strong point in ⁓ the Big 12 as a whole. And that'll lead me into, now that we are one week through, I think almost everybody in the Big 12 has played a conference game. We'll do a quick little whip around of the Big 12 standings and scores right now through the first set of games. Iowa State, Texas Tech, Houston.
ASU and Kansas are all 1-0. ASU and Kansas both with losses on their ledger. Iowa State and Texas Tech both 4-0. Houston 3-0. it's going to be very early. You're not going to see any separation just yet. is this going to be a consistent top five that you think we see going down the line?
Austen Bundy (32:44)
I would say so, you're probably going to see a lot of these guys down the stretch. I would include a TCU in there. would include...
name escapes me now. Well, I guess at the beginning I thought Utah was going to be up in there, but then they kind of they they tripped over themselves this past week as well and kind of exposed what they could or could not be. I would not be surprised if BYU sneaks in there at some point as well. They look a little scary too. I don't expect Houston to stay up there. I know U of A is also undefeated, but that Kansas State game was not a conference game that was scheduled well well before
Andrew Hayslett (33:06)
Good job.
Austen Bundy (33:27)
they left the Pac-12. ⁓ I don't expect them to be up there towards November, December, but who knows at this point. Nobody expected us to be up there until December came along anyway, so it could all be completely different at that point.
Andrew Hayslett (33:43)
Yeah, I'm in agreement on...
I just don't see them being contenders although they'll probably win a game this their game this week they're playing Oklahoma State and we know the disaster that Oklahoma State is so yeah looking at these other teams UCF they've got Kansas at home which I think should be an interesting game UCF undefeated Kansas with the one loss as you said Tom
Those are kind of the other big big games I'm through this week. You've also got Actually, not that's next week. I'm getting getting a week ahead of myself here. I'm jumping gun Give me a minute, but yeah, I regardless on Arizona. I just don't think they'll be anything special ⁓
Arizona's going to Iowa State this week. So that that should be a tough game for them. Iowa State I would expect to win another game. There's not really any other eye grabbing games to me that I probably put maybe Utah, West Virginia's the next most interesting game, but there's nothing that just jumps off the table and says, this is a this could be a battle of two Titans. It's more of a
a battle of two teams that we aren't expecting to be good and they haven't looked good this season or kind of a lot side match just not much interest this week. So this ASU-GCU game is probably the Big 12's most impactful game of the week I would say.
Austen Bundy (35:34)
If Arizona somehow upsets Iowa's stay, then I'll reconsider, but I don't see that happening.
Tom Hardon (35:34)
I'm on.
I'm going to throw a little Dark Horse game to watch with BYU in Colorado. BYU is on my radar as you were saying Austin for contention for the Big 12 Championship game. But going into Folsom Field, it's a bit of a tough place to play and that'll be a decent little barometer to see if BYU is going to be for real or can Colorado...
pull off the upset, can they knock the Cougars out of the top 25 and really start to shake up the rest of the field? ⁓ Obviously our game is going to be the big game to watch, being the Friday game. I'm also looking at, like you said, Utah, West Virginia, how does Utah bounce back ⁓ from their loss and...
how do they move forward from
really just getting shellacked. And I was watching a little bit of tech in Utah. I kind of tuned out when it was still 10 to 7. And then I checked the score later and thought to myself, holy crap, they had an entire game in the fourth quarter. It was just one of those things that I'm looking at the line score and thinking, did I miss a couple of weeks here? What happened? But we've got a lot of, still got a lot of.
lot of room to go for the end of the season. And what we saw in the Big 12 opener to me, I'd like to see a little bit more improvement on the defense. And I love seeing the continued spreading out on the offense. I'll open it up to you guys for some closing thoughts before we sign off here.
Austen Bundy (37:33)
I will say I was impressed with Sam's improvement in his play. He made less mistakes. He looked like he was back a little bit to his normal self. ⁓ I liked his grit when he was, ⁓ when he had to rush. He didn't make any dumb like holding onto the ball too long and not getting rid of it, but he knew when he needed to rush. He knew ⁓
went to slide and not get into any risky scenarios there. ⁓ But I think overall Sam showed some strong improvement in his game. And I feel like we saw a little bit more of what we saw from him late in the season last year. So that's where I give him a lot of credit in that sense. And I think it's just encouraging to know that he is the type of quarterback that is able to rebound like that and not. ⁓
get too much in his head and also not ⁓ be impacted by poor performances too much. He showed a level of maturity that I think is very desirable in a quarterback for our program. So I give him lot of kudos for what we saw this weekend.
Andrew Hayslett (38:42)
I'm not going rehash anything I've said throughout this shot. think that's pretty much all self-explanatory defense to get improved in the secondary offense. You spread the ball. one play that we haven't really mentioned that I want to give a shout to is Jalen Clem on special teams. There was a turn, I want to say somewhere in the first half, where the Baylor returner was looking to break one and the offensive lineman, Jic Clem,
shut his blocker, made the tackle, just what you want to see out on special teams. So I want to shout him and just that that was a good play.
Austen Bundy (39:24)
we almost forgot our boy shaman matair he got a lot more targets than ⁓ in a lot of the previous games he finally got involved a little bit more he didn't find the end zone but i still like to see that he got involved a lot more
Tom Hardon (39:36)
And keeping the Shaman Matera fan club happy as always and hoping that trend stays ⁓ true for Friday's game. Great stuff as always guys. Looking forward to ⁓ previewing this matchup all week long on Devils in Detail for Austin Bundy and Andrew Hazlitt. I'm Tom Harden signing off. As always, forks up and go Devils!