Simone: ASU Football Close To Breaking Through

Consider this the calm after the storm for Arizona State football.

December and early January were filled with assistant coaches coming and going, a close Sun Bowl win over Florida State in El Paso and a slew of high-profile high school commits this past weekend.

Now the focus shifts to 2020 for a program many believe is trending up under soon-to-be third-year head coach Herm Edwards.

“This team has shown they are capable of playing on the biggest stages at any given moment,” former ASU all-conference safety, now Sun Devil radio sideline reporter Jordan Simone said in a recent in-studio sitdown with Sports360AZ.com’s Brad Cesmat. “It’s just a matter of consistently doing that. When you have true freshmen, it’s really hard to maintain that level of play. They had 32 of them this year.”

One of Edwards’ new hires is offensive coordinator Zak Hill, who served in the same capacity at Boise State and arrived in Tempe knowing he had some young but talented pieces to work with moving forward.

“If I’m Zak Hill and I watched that bowl game,” Simone continued. “I’m thinking, ‘wow, I have an amazing true freshman quarterback in Jayden Daniels who will be a sophomore and then I’ve got talent all around.’ You add a couple of grad transfers on the offensive line and then they go out and recruit the heck out of receiver…he’s just got to be foaming at the mouth.”

If last year was any indication, ASU will have early spring workouts. They open the 2020 season hosting Northern Arizona on September 5th at Sun Devil Stadium.