Herm Edwards, the coach of the No. 23 Arizona State Sun Devils, gave a quote on Monday that made a lot of people chuckle, because it sounded ridiculous:
Herm Edwards’ latest widely mocked quote makes sense in context
He was making a common point about clock management.
Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports
In the 10 months or so Edwards has been ASU’s coach, we’ve walked this path a few times. His introductory press conference was packed with odd moments, most notably an answer where he made it sound mildly like he didn’t know a Sun Devil was ASU’s mascot. (He told a reporter from a site called Devil’s Digest to “watch out for them devils.”)
A few months later, Edwards noted an obvious difference between his old world of the NFL and his new world of college football: “You’re in pro football, it’s kind of interesting, because when you win, you draft last. In college football, you recruit.” He was only talking about the challenges that come with doing the latter, but it sounded funny anyway.
(To be fair, ASU set the tone for people to joke on Edwards with the super weird press release it put out announcing his hire in December 2017. But let’s set that aside.)
Edwards’ quote about college coaches wanting to score and how “that’s where it gets away from them” was not weird, if you get the full context.
He was talking about the end of Arizona State’s Week 2 game against Michigan State, a 16-13 win for the Sun Devils. At the end of regulation and with the score tied, the ASU offense got close to the MSU end zone.
With 2:09 to play, the Sun Devils had first-and-goal at the Spartans’ six-yard line. Scoring a touchdown right then would’ve given Brian Lewerke and the Michigan State offense a nice chunk of time to mount a game-tying drive. College’s rule that stops the clock while the ball gets set for play after a first down would only extend the game further for MSU.
Instead, ASU ran the ball short of the goal line a few times, called a timeout with three seconds left, and won on a chip-shot, 28-yard Brandon Ruiz field goal.
When Edwards talked about the dangers of chasing “points,” he only meant the dangers of rushing into a touchdown when you could just kill the clock:
This was Edwards’ full quote, which came in response to the question: How much different is the college game than the pro game?
It’s different this way. Most colleges coaches wanna score. They always think points are the thing, and that’s how offenses are run. It’s possessions, for most of these teams. How many possessions do you have? How many times can you score? And that’s where it gets away from them, I think. Probably a lot of coaches in that moment would’ve wanted to score a touchdown. I was opposite. I said, ‘We’re not gonna score. We don’t have to score a touchdown to win this game,’ because I was nervous about the fact that, look, ‘We give them too much time, I’ve seen this too many times in college football.’ They go right back down the field.
See, college football is different, ‘cause the clock stops every time you make a first down. That’s a problem. You gotta understand that part of it, because in pro football, that’s not the case. You run outta timeouts and you don’t run outta bounds, you’re good. You’re solid. But in college football, every time you make that first down, they’ve gotta set the chains, that thing stops. And the way offenses play now, they’re up on the line of scrimmage so fast, it’s about a second or two, and they’re going again. And so that’s what makes me nervous about the college game, is always trying to score.
Reasonable people could disagree on whether Edwards’ strategy is the correct one. College kickers are often bad. Leaving the game to one instead of just pounding through to the end zone carries more risk in the Pac-12 than it would in the NFL.
But Edwards was only giving a common view, and one that happened to work well in practice for ASU. He’s become a good case-study in the problem with listening to coaches in soundbites, as fun as he tends to make it.
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