ASU Football: First Week of Camp Quotables

House of Sparky wanted to highlight the quotes that Arizona State football had to say during its first week of fall camp leading into the 2021 season.

Head Coach Herm Edwards on the NCAA Investigation and the possible distractions

“What I tell them all the time. Every season. Every year around here. Don’t let the outside noises affect what we need to do. That’s our mindset. I think you folks have been around me long enough, have I changed? The players see me every day. They say, ‘Coach is good. We’re good.’ And that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to prepare to play football. That’s what we’re going to do. Nothing else. Today was our first day, and tomorrow we’ll get to go practice football again, which is a good thing.”

Offensive Coordinator Zak Hill on the second year of the offense

“Without getting into too much specifics, coming in as a first year, not really knowing the personnel and you’re trying to figure that out quickly. Moving into this year, into a spring ball and a fall camp you’ve got to get feels for the guys and what they’re good at and so now with our offense, we’re gonna piece the personnel around where we need them. It’s not just, ‘Hey Johnny (Wilson) is going to be the right every single time,’ we’re gonna move guys around, lots of different personnels, shifts and motions and stuff like that. So utilizing those guys in the right way is going to be key for us. Getting our best personnel on the field whatever formations those are for us, then being smart too with Jayden and his skills.”

Linebacker coach Chris Claiborne on the balance of the Veterans and Youth in the linebacker core

“You’ve got to try to establish your identity, and I think I tell them all the time to be the best, you’ve got to be the best at home, first, then you’ve got to expand out. Each game, you get a chance to expand out in the region and say you’re the best group. I try to make sure that we establish that, that’s always been my mindset, and I think we’ve got the guys to do that. Again, it’s about the young guys pushing the older guys, too — let’s not just get hung up on the older guys. I think you get these younger guys (Eric Gentry, Will Shaffer, Connor Soelle) those guys pushing to play will only make the other guys more accountable every play.”

Defensive line coach Robert Rodriguez on LSU transfer Travez Moore

“It’s been awesome, and to his credit, he came out in the spring, and everybody saw him in the spring game. The spring game is the first time that he rushed at the angles that we’re coaching him, NFL angles — I say NFL angles, but really what we did with the Vikings, what we do here now with the Sun Devils — it’s about bearing down on the quarterback, and so everything he’s done, and all these kids have done, go away from the quarterback, just vertically up the field, and we teach these angles, but they’re more combative, so you have to be a more combative rusher. That’s hard for a lot of guys, especially athletes like Travez. But his way didn’t work. So getting him to understand that, ‘Dude, you’re going to have the ability, you’ve got to do it our way,’ it finally clicked, about a day or two, practice or two, before the spring game, and then the spring game you saw it. To his credit, we talked, he worked it all summer and you see it immediately. He’s working the angles, he’s doing it the right way. Still have some habits to break through, but he is lightyears ahead of where he was last spring.”

Quarterback Jayden Daniels building the chemistry with the youthful wide receivers

“I feel great. It’s stuff that we hit on, stuff that we missed, and it’s conflict that comes with football, and that’s practice. You’re not going to be 100 percent or perfect in practice, but as long as we’re perfect in games, and just the chemistry — I know a couple guys were tired — first day, it’s hot, so they’re trying to adjust to the heat, adjust to practice. For the young guys, it’s their first fall camp, so they don’t really know how it is. Just building it each and every day, just stacking days.”

Linebacker Darien Butler on slimming down this offseason

“I feel like it was going to be good to be in shape and drop a few pounds. Something I feel like I just needed to do, lean out. Just trusting this process, the way they feed us. “I feel lighter on my feet, I feel faster, I feel stronger. So I’ll give the credit to (Sports performance Coach) Joe (Connolly), the defensive staff and all them.”