TEMPE — Arizona State’s red zone offense has been a work in progress this season, to put it lightly.
Only three teams in Power Four have a worse red zone touchdown percentage than ASU’s 45.95%, which has proven to be critical as the Sun Devils are top 35 nationally in red zone attempts.
ASU showed some signs it had cracked the code in Jeff Sims’ second start of the season at Iowa State, where the Sun Devils scored touchdowns on all three red zone trips.
However, one of those touchdowns was nullified by another lingering problem for the team — penalties — and ASU had to settle for a field goal.
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Sims had a four-yard touchdown run on second-and-goal but a holding penalty took that away. He appeared to have a touchdown toss on the next play but that was blown dead because of a false start.
“Some penalties, we’ve cleaned up. Others are then showing up with some of the younger guys making first-time mistakes and that’s part of the game,” head coach Kenny Dillingham said Wednesday. “Other things, like pre-snap penalties, covering guys up, false starts, jumping offsides, like stupid penalties, I can’t stand. Those are controllables.
“The other penalties, hopefully, naturally will come down through just coaching it.”
The field goal came after two ensuing incompletions.
On the first ASU touchdown that stood, Sims ran behind Raleek Brown as a lead blocker to pave the way forward around the edge of the trenches.
It was from eight yards out after chunk passes of 14, 28 and 38 yards softened the defense earlier in the drive.
It was more of the run opening up the pass on the next touchdown drive, as an 18-yard pass to Chamon Metayer for the score came after three straight rushes, including a 12-yarder by Sims.
While the results are encouraging, ASU offensive coordinator Marcus Arroyo was hesitant to say the problem’s been solved after a one-game sample size.
“We’re not there yet. We got a lot of moving pieces and I think when you can use your plus-one runs at certain times, that helps you,” Arroyo said Wednesday. “Whether that comes into play each week is going to be depending on who we’re playing, you know? And so I think opportunities for him to be that guy, obviously at the end of the day, it’s hard to fathom running your quarterback 28 times (and) say you’re going to survive that.
“That’s just big-time football, and it’s a physical game. So, hopefully we can find some of those aspects and some other people and get creative. But again with the plus-one run stuff, if you can create it, is advantageous.”
The Sun Devils didn’t need the red zone on their final touchdown, as Sims broke off ASU’s most explosive touchdown of the season from 88 yards out.
ASU won’t be able to take the same game plan into a matchup with West Virginia, for more than just the wear-and-tear reasons Arroyo alluded to.
West Virginia is giving up just 76.3 rushing yards per game over its last three, including 82 to Houston for the Cougars’ first time under triple digits during Big 12 play.
The Mountaineers are also 13th among 68 Power Four teams in preventing red zone touchdowns but is much worse (65th nationally) at holding teams totally scoreless.
If ASU can’t come up with new creative ways to score in the red zone after putting Sims’ power run game on tape at Iowa State, it could be a busy day for kicker Jesus Gomez.
While he’s had inconsistencies this season, Gomez has been mostly nails when cleaning up red zone shortcomings, making 13 of 15 field goals attempted inside 40 yards.
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