Head coach Kenny Dillingham and Arizona State took a devastating loss to Texas in the College Football Playoff quarterfinals at the Peach Bowl on Wednesday. Despite mounting a heroic fourth quarter comeback, Dillingham and the Sun Devils fell to Texas in double overtime.
Arizona State needed everything in the tank to get back into this game. Cam Skattebo was excellent in the second half, quarterback Sam Leavitt made play after play for Arizona State, and Dillingham's defense came up with a ton of huge stops when it needed to hang around in the game. Despite the team's effort to get back into it, Dillingham is still putting the blame entirely on himself for the loss, via Blake Niemann of 247 Sports.
“To be honest, it's all on me,” Dillingham said. “We're in a Cover 0 look. Late in the play clock, Ewers did a phenomenal job, checking out, recognizing there Cover 0 look, checking into a max pro, and I didn't have the ability to get out of it. That's on me. We left our guys iso'd in Cover 0 into a max pro. I've gotta go into a game with the ability to get out of that call.”
Dillingham is referring to the decisive play of the game in the first overtime, when Arizona State was just one play from victory. After Skattebo punched in a touchdown for the Sun Devils on their first possession of the extra period, Arizona State's defense forced Texas into a fourth-and-13. Dillingham, with his usual aggressive style, elected to send an all-out blitz and leave his defensive backs in one-on-one coverage with no help.
However, Texas quarterback Quinn Ewers won the chess match against Dillingham and Arizona State on this occasion. He checked into a Cover 0-beater and Texas picked up the blitz perfectly, allowing Ewers to find wide receiver Matthew Golden for a long touchdown to extend the game into a second overtime. After another Ewers touchdown pass and an interception by Andrew Mukuba Jr., the Longhorns had closed the door and moved on to the semifinals.
Regardless of if he thinks that he let the team down with that one fatal call, Dillingham still did one of the best coaching jobs in the country this season to get this Arizona State football team to this point.