Arizona State football: Coach Kenny Dillingham's talking points ahead of spring practice

The Arizona State football team is now in the second year of the Kenny Dillingham era and it will begin its second set of spring drills on Tuesday. Dillingham met with the media on Thursday to talk about expectations and the coming season and what he learned from his first year, one in which the Sun Devils went 3-9 overall and 2-7 in Pac-12 play.

Some of the things the energetic coach hit upon:

1. Dealing with injuries

Quarterback Jaden Rashada is the most notable player sidelined as the Sun Devils start spring drills. The true freshman injured the thumb on his throwing hand in an off-the-field incident and that required surgery. Dillingham thinks he can be back by the end of spring practice in a limited capacity.

The other two players who for now are wide receiver Xavier Guillory and offensive lineman Bram Walden.

Guillory sustained a foot injury in the Washington game but the extent wasn't discovered until later. He had surgery during the offseason. He played in two games after that but did not record a catch and was in a boot and riding a scooter by the end of the season. Walden missed six games and was another player who spent the last part of the season in a walking boot, eventually having surgery too.

2. The team will practice harder

Dillingham was quick to point out that because the team was so depleted by injuries last season, it could not practice the way he wanted to practice since it barely had enough bodies to field a scout team.

ASU had 31 players miss a total of 140 games due to injuries. The biggest impact was on the offensive line as nine from that group missed a combined 56 games.

"We have the depth on both lines this year that we should be able to get after it a little more in live settings. The most frustrating thing about last season was when we hit week 2 we couldn't practice so we didn't get better, we got worse,'' he said. "We were better at the beginning of the year, in the middle of the year after our break, after our bye week because we were practicing hard. Once we got all the injuries, we couldn't practice, we couldn't hit. We were down to six O-linemen.

"You have to practice to get better. It's very simple. If you don't practice anything you're not going to get better. If you want to tackle better, you have to tackle. If you want to get open, you have to run routes vs. a DB. You can do all your cone drills, do all that stuff but you have to go do it in a real football setting,'' Dillingham added. "We couldn't do that at the end of last year. That's the part of last year that irks me the most. That development piece for a lot of the guys, when we needed it, we couldn't do it in order to stay healthy enough to field a team."

3. Four "bonus" players

The ASU roster is once again being bolstered by one of the nation's largest transfer portal classes. However Dillingham has a handful of others he thinks can be significant contributors, but they aren't exactly "newcomers" in the traditional sense of the word.

They were at the school last season but did not play. Two of those were players out because of injury in wide receiver Jordyn Tyson, a transfer from Colorado, and offensive lineman Ben Coleman, who came over from California. Both were out with leg injuries. Coleman did not play at all while Tyson played sparingly in the last three games just to shake some rust off but did not record a catch.

The other two are safety Xavion Alford and wide receiver Jake Smith, transfers who needed waivers to play but did not get them. Both are regarded as players who could have a significant impact with some in the ASU camp saying Alford might have been the best player in his position group last year.

"We signed four players last year that I felt were really plus players that didn't play. And those guys aren't really talked about. Those are four really, really good football players that technically we signed from the transfer portal that are only going to play from this year so we've added four bonus players to our roster that people aren't going to talk about that are pretty good players. It's exciting to get those four players back."

In addition, offensive lineman Emmit Bohle chose to return after missing 10 games with a broken leg, so he was another player that the team literally never really had.

4. More depth in the trenches

Perhaps the biggest issue ASU had last year was personnel depth. The Sun Devils beefed up there as well as on the defensive front.

Among the newcomers up front are Jalen Klemm (Washington), Josh Atkins (Hawaii), Shancco Matautia (New Mexico) and Joey Su'a (Arkansas). ASU also has seven linemen back that saw playing time led by Leif Fautanu, who played every snap at center.

New additions on the defensive line include Jacob Kongaika (Arizona), Jeff Clark (Louisville), Roman Pitre (Purdue), J.P. Deeter (Purdue) and Justin Wodtly (Cincinnati).

"Most depth, O-line, D-line, safety, wide receiver," Dillingham said of his depth. "We may need another body or two at running back, tight end, linebacker potentially, depending on how healthy people stay, how people develop. "

5. NIL situation has improved

Since the day he was first appointed, Dillingham has lobbied for financial support in funding the NIL coffers. It is an area in which ASU struggled to embrace the concept under the leadership of former athletic director Ray Anderson.

Dillingham said he has been pleased with how far the school has come in the last year in that regard but it was so far behind it had a lot to do just to get in the financial arms race.

“The progress we’ve seen is unbelievable,” he said. “To be honest, from the last game (in 2023) to today is, and I can’t even put in words how much growth we’ve had. Now the difference is everybody’s growing. That’s the challenge. So right when you catch up, you’re still behind? Because you caught up. So we have to move at a faster pace than everybody else because we started right behind the race.

“So yes, are we catching up. Are we probably trending faster than most people? Yes. But as we’re going and hitting these numbers and hitting goals, other people are still inching further and further ahead of us because, to be honest, we started way further behind. But we are definitely in the right direction.”

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona State football: Coach Kenny Dillingham's key talking points