Kenny Dillingham took over Arizona State’s play-calling for the Sun Bowl and kept it for the first five games of this season. On Tuesday, Marcus Arroyo got it back.
The scoring numbers explain why. Since a 70-point opener against FCS Morgan State, Arizona State has scored 20, 24 and 19 points.
Dillingham Said the Honest Thing
“I just wanted to be able to be a head coach again,” Dillingham said. He went further, admitting he is “better suited to be a head football coach” and that taking the play-calling may have been selfish.
That is a rare admission. Most head coaches who grab a coordinator’s job and then hand it back explain it as a strategic adjustment. Dillingham called it what it was: a decision that served him more than it served his team.
He also pointed at the other side of the ball. Dillingham said the defense was not on the same page, and he was seen working directly with that group at practice. A head coach cannot fix a defense while scripting an offense, and he appears to have figured that out five games in.
Arroyo Is Not Making a Thing of It
“Our communication’s been exactly the same,” Arroyo said. “Nothing changes. We just got to get a lot better.”
That is a coordinator with nothing to gain from a public grievance. Arroyo called plays for all of 2024 and the 2025 regular season before Dillingham took over for the bowl game. He knows the offense and he knows the roster.
Whether he fixes it is a separate question. Twenty points a game against the schedule Arizona State has played is not a play-calling problem alone. Somebody has to block, and somebody has to get open.
The Timing Is Smart
Arizona State hosts Hawai’i on Saturday, then gets No. 11 Texas Tech. That is the right order of operations. You install a new voice in the headset against the easier opponent and find out what you have before the schedule turns.
Dillingham deserves credit for moving quickly rather than defending the decision through November. Coaches who admit a mistake in October are usually the ones who still have jobs in January.
The frustrating part for Sun Devils fans is that this is two months of a season spent learning something the staff could have reasoned out in August. Arizona State is not deep enough to spend five games figuring out who should talk into the headset.
Now it has one easy week to get the offense functioning. If the Hawai’i game produces another 20-point afternoon, the play-caller was never the issue.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.