While the ASU football team certainly faces issues following Saturday’s 33-14 loss at Stanford, the health of its starting quarterback doesn’t appear to be a major one.

Senior Danny Sullivan left the game against the Cardinal with a mild knee sprain, but ASU coach Dennis Erickson said at his weekly press conference he doesn’t expect the injury to affect Sullivan’s ability to play when the Sun Devils (4-3, 2-2 Pac-10) square off with California on Saturday.

“He’ll probably practice [Tuesday],” Erickson said. “I don’t know if he’ll be full speed or not, but there’s no problem as far as the game is concerned.”

Sullivan said that he also doesn’t expect any setback from the injury.
“It’s fine,” he said. “I’ll be ready to go.”

After the high of the dramatic win against Washington two weeks ago, Sullivan said the Stanford loss was a wake-up call that a team cannot dwell on the events of the previous game — whether they’re good or bad.

“[The] stuff that happened the week before doesn’t matter, especially in this conference,” he said. “Every week is a grind. You can be a good team the first week, and completely change the next week, just [based] on who you’re playing and how they try and exploit you.”

It might be time to go back to the drawing board for the ASU defense, which surrendered 473 yards of total offense to the Cardinal, including 236 yards on the ground, after coming into the game ranked first in the Pac-10 in total defense and second in the nation in rushing defense.

“It comes down to blocking and staying in gaps,” Erickson said. “They came off and knocked us off the football, No. 1. That has not happened to us this year, but it sure as heck happened on Saturday. We didn’t tackle real well, so [there’s] a lot of work we’ve got to do. We’ve got to get better this week at handling that, and I know we will.”

But the Sun Devils will have to shore things up on both sides of the football, as they now enter the toughest part of their schedule. Four of ASU’s final five opponents are currently ranked in the Bowl Championship Series Top 25, starting with the No. 24 Golden Bears.

“That’s just how tough this league is, particularly where we’re at right now with our schedule,” Erickson said. “We’re going to have to step up and start playing football like we’re capable of, because this is where we want to be. In this part of the schedule, we should step up and play football and win some games.”

But Erickson said he is confident his team can rebound from the loss and still find success in the latter half of the season.

“This is a very resilient group, and we’ll see how resilient this week,” he said. “How you react to the setback’s the key, not the setback itself. [We will] learn from it, react to it and see where we’re at.”

The yellow flags still remain a huge issue for ASU. The Sun Devils now rank as the team with the most penalty yardage in the nation (84.43 per game). ASU was penalized 10 times for 90 yards against Stanford, including a leaping foul on freshman linebacker Vontaze Burfict that erased a missed Stanford field goal and ultimately led to a converted one.

“I’ve got a huge concern for it,” Erickson said. “You can’t have penalties like that, and we continue to have them. I did a poor job of coaching [Burfict on] what the rules were on that field goal. He jumped and went across the line of scrimmage, stepped on a guy, and that’s a 15-yard penalty.”

Other injuries

Senior center Thomas Altieri, who left Saturday’s game with a knee injury, is “very questionable” to play against Cal, Erickson said.

Erickson said he is unsure if senior wide receiver Kyle Williams (hamstring) or Dimitri Nance (shoulder) will practice this week.

Reach the reporter at gina.mizell@asu.edu.