Although ASU's failure to recover an onside kick gave USC an opportunity to complete their comeback late in the fourth quarter of their 28-27 loss on Saturday, it was ultimately ASU's young wide receiving corps that did the team in.
After losing multiple wide receivers last year, including Brandon Aiyuk when he was selected in the first round of the 2020 NFL Draft, the Sun Devil receiving corps looked to be depleted.
Although inexperienced as a group, heading into the team's first game of the season, the coaching staff expected big things out of graduate student Frank Darby and highly touted freshmen Johnny Wilson and LV Bunkley-Shelton.
But, after Darby went down with a rib injury in the first quarter and didn’t return for the rest of the game, it was up to the freshmen to carry the passing workload.
“It’s next man up mentality,” sophomore quarterback Jayden Daniels said. “Without Frank, we really have no experience out of the receiver group. (We) can’t rely on Frank. (We) gotta spread the ball around.”
Although Daniels did his best to do just that by connecting with five different players, he finished the game with only 134 passing yards, his third-fewest passing yards in a game in his young career.
The last ASU drive of the game was where the receivers' inexperience combined with Darby’s absence hurt the most.
With just over a minute left in the game, Daniels connected with redshirt sophomore wide receiver Geordon Porter for an 18-yard gain. Then, over the next four plays, Daniels could not complete a single pass to any of his targeted wide receivers, ending all hopes of an ASU comeback.
After the game, first-year offensive coordinator Zak Hill said not having Darby to end the game hindered both his play calling and the offense as a whole.
“There were some things we wanted to get to and knowing that he (Darby) was out changed a few things. You’ve got to adjust as a coordinator and as an offense,” Hill said. “Some of it was based around Frank. Obviously, we wanted to get him the ball a little bit more, and we didn’t have that opportunity.”
Junior running back Rachaad White ended up leading the Sun Devils in receiving yards with 70 yards on three catches.
Out of the receivers, Bunkley-Shelton paced the group with four catches for 28 yards but ultimately lost a fumble on one of his four receptions. Meanwhile, the 6 foot 7 inch Wilson was unable to make an impact for ASU. He was targeted four times and caught zero balls thrown his way.
Head coach Herm Edwards believes the young receiving corps’ poor performance can be chalked up to nerves.
“We played a lot of young guys today and you could see the nerves for some of them at the receiver position,” Edwards said. “We didn’t get enough out of our passing game and I think that’s what we have to build on. We lost Frank early in the game and played a lot of guys with not a lot of experience, but they’re going to grow from this."
ASU's receiving corps will have this week to shake off their performance versus USC as they prepare to take on Cal at Sun Devil Stadium next Saturday. Daniels said his message to the young receiver group will be to move on and look forward to the next week because “at the end of the day, it’s just playing football.”
Reach the reporter at cfahrend@asu.edu and follow @chris_drop_ on Twitter.
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