{"id":24413,"date":"2012-08-20T14:52:47","date_gmt":"2012-08-20T19:52:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=24413"},"modified":"2012-08-20T16:16:27","modified_gmt":"2012-08-20T21:16:27","slug":"arizona-state-sun-devils-2012-football-preview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/arizona-state-sun-devils-2012-football-preview-24413\/","title":{"rendered":"Arizona State Sun Devils 2012 Football Preview"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a> Running back Cameron Marshall enters his senior season and is poised for big things, but are the Sun Devils?[\/caption2011 Record:\u00a0 6-7, 4-5 Pac 12<\/strong><\/p>\n

2011 Bowl:\u00a0 N\/A<\/strong><\/p>\n

Head Coach:\u00a0 Todd Graham<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bovada Odds to win Pac-12:\u00a0 60\/1<\/p>\n

Offense<\/strong><\/p>\n

Todd Graham will be entering his first year with the Sun Devils.\u00a0 He inherits a poor offense.\u00a0 ASU has to replace its staring QB and its top 3 receivers, after having a good year throwing the ball last year, finishing 3rd in the Pac-12 in passing yardage with 316.7 yards per game in the air.<\/p>\n

Losing QB Brock Osweiler hurts a lot, as he went pro after his outstanding year.\u00a0 Replacing him will be either So. Mike Bercovici or redshirt freshman Michael Eubank, but neither have started a single game in their careers so far, so the inexperience is expected to make the Sun Devils a worse team than they were a year ago, and Athlon magazine predicts a 3-6 Pac-12 record for them.\u00a0 Eubank is the better athlete, which may serve him better in Graham’s offense, though Bercovici did win the backup job last year.<\/p>\n

The lack of experience at QB and wideout is going to be a problem all year.\u00a0 They have no legit No. 1 receiver and it’s good they have some talent to cover for it in the backfield.\u00a0 Cameron Marshall rushed for 1000+ yards in 2011 on a bad ankle and they’re going to need more of that this year with such low expectations for an aerial attack.<\/p>\n

Defense<\/strong><\/p>\n

ASU lost both of their starting safeties and three of their LBs.\u00a0 Their best pass rusher, Junior Onyenali, was suspended for all of spring. Onyeali needs to be in good standing and eligible to play for this team to have any chance of improving a defense that ranked 9th of 12 last year in conference play.<\/p>\n

LB will just be a huge problem, is all.\u00a0 Brandon Magee must remain healthy.<\/p>\n

They will employ a 4-3 base and use one on one coverage at the corners, as cornerback is actually a strength on an otherwise poor defense.\u00a0 Still, the room for improvement is huge, as they finished 10th of 12 in pass defense last year, giving up 273 yards per game.\u00a0 They need consistency from the DL to improve this, though, as they were just giving QBs way too much time to throw.\u00a0 They gave up an average of 40 points per game in the last five games of the year, all of which were losses.<\/p>\n

Special Teams<\/strong><\/p>\n

ASU will be strong in returns behind the efforts of Jamal Miles, who had three returns for TDs last year.<\/p>\n

Their punter Josh Hubner should be very good, as well, but they can’t get another inconsistent year from placekicker ALex Garoutte, who made only 15 of 22 attempts in 2011 and missed a lot of very crucial ones.<\/p>\n

Outlook<\/strong><\/p>\n

Graham has a lot of work to do with this team, and it’s likely they regress from an already poor year last year.\u00a0 They need to get experience for their QBs so this will be a year of growth for the Sun Devils.\u00a0 They also have a very difficult schedule, as they end the year with 3 of the final 4 on the road.\u00a0 If they can pull a 6-6 year, Graham will be pleased, despite no coach ever admitting that winning half the games is the ultimate goal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Running back Cameron Marshall enters his senior season and is poised for big things, but are the Sun Devils?[\/caption2011 Record:\u00a0 6-7, 4-5 Pac 12 2011 Bowl:\u00a0 N\/A Head Coach:\u00a0 Todd Graham Bovada Odds to win Pac-12:\u00a0 60\/1 Offense Todd Graham will be entering his first year with the Sun Devils.\u00a0 He inherits a poor offense.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40250,"featured_media":23962,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[200,1444],"tags":[6898,6865,2274,6897],"class_list":["post-24413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-college-football","category-headlines","tag-arizona-state-football-preview","tag-college-football-betting-previews","tag-college-football-odds","tag-pac-12-football"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40250"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24413"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24419,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24413\/revisions\/24419"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}