While some coaches would be over the moon following a dominant Week 1 performance, Arizona State’s Kenny Dillingham takes a bit of a different approach.
Dillingham delivered an epic speech about the importance of staying uncomfortable and mentioned that his team practiced “like a 1-11 team” on Tuesday.
“Today, our kids thought that they won the Super Bowl on Saturday,” Dillingham said. “They come out here acting like we’re an undefeated, good football team, and we practice like a 1-11 team today. Now, luckily, they responded the last six periods, and we had a really, really good ending to practice, but that was a 1-11 practice for about an hour-and-a-half.”
Despite being picked to finish last in the Big 12 in the Preseason Media Poll, the Sun Devils flipped their narrative in a big way in Week 1, beating Wyoming 48-7 in their season debut.
When asked what made the flip switch toward the end of practice, Dillingham said, “Comfort. People feel good about themselves. All of y’all are writing really good things and posting all these stats like we’re the ‘No. 1 defense in America’. Through one week? What kind of stat is that? ‘We’re this, we’re that, look at all this really cool stuff. Oh, we’re now the 14th-worst team in the Big 12’. Like, what the hell are we doing?”
Dillingham finished his thoughts by saying, “We got comfortable, and I’m trying to prevent that from happening, but human nature seeps in, and we gotta be able to eliminate that. We haven’t done anything. We’re still a nobody. We gotta get it out of our heads that we played a really good football game. Who cares?”
Arizona State will take the field in Week 2 vs. Mississippi State at 9:30 a.m. CT on Saturday, September 7th.
