Arizona State and new coach Herm Edwards beat No. 15 Michigan State on Saturday in Tempe, 16-13. Kicker Brandon Ruiz hit a 28-yard field goal as time expired.
Herm Edwards’ Arizona State just beat a top-15 Michigan State
The Sun Devils might just be good.
Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports
ASU had to claw after trailing 13-3 at the start of the fourth quarter. A 27-yard N’Keal Harry touchdown pass tied it with nine minutes left, and then the Sun Devils went tit-for-tat with the Spartans until Ruiz had the chance to win it at the end. They scored 13 unanswered.
So, the Sun Devils and their oft-maligned head coach have a signature win.
It’s hard to tell whether Michigan State is bad or just aggressively Michigan State and committed to playing the least aesthetically pleasing brand of football possible. The Spartans came shockingly close to losing to Utah State at home in Week 1, needing late-game heroics on both sides of the ball to avoid it. After, Bill Connelly wrote:
So should we be worried about MSU?
If they lose at Arizona State this Saturday, we’ll talk. Until then, this feels like same old Michigan State.
Well, about that.
On another hand, Arizona State might be better than people figured it would be. S&P+ projected the Sun Devils to go 5-7. There’s still much we don’t know about 2018 ASU, in part because there’s still much we don’t know about the team it played Saturday. But the Sun Devils looked really good in a 49-7 roll past UTSA in the first week, and now they’ve done this against what’s usually one of the country’s most dependable teams.
The Edwards hire made objectively little sense when ASU athletic director Ray Anderson, a former agent of Edwards’, made it last December. Hiring a coach who’d be 64 in his first season and hadn’t coached at all since he was going 2-14 with the Chiefs in 2008 was bizarre, and so was the buzzwordy press release that made it official. ASU aligned in a “New Leadership Model” that wasn’t that absurd in practice but sounded like a joke.
There’s been a method to the Sun Devils’ weirdness, though. Edwards has insisted he’s been serious about this all along, and even if he gives odd quotes and seems old for his job, there’s no proof he can’t do it. His team’s gotten off to a hell of a good start.
See More:
