(Photo: ASU Athletics)
After a roller-coaster series of weeks for ASU football, two of the team’s more polarizing defensive players are adjusting to everything that happened. Freshman linebacker DJ Calhoun may be looking at a permanent position change, and senior safety Damarious Randall responded to his critics by turning a complete 180 from the UCLA game.
Most notably perhaps, DJ Calhoun, the unit’s WILL linebacker for its first five games, was converted to a SPUR linebacker during this week’s practices. The move both plays to the strengths of Calhoun and accounts for the shoulder injury sustained by the incumbent SPUR linebacker, Laiu Moeakiola.
“It’s a little difficult because they have everybody switched around, putting people in new spots,” Calhoun said. They put me back at SPUR. It’s more pass coverage so I have to get that down more… I can blitz, and I’m more mobile. I’m the smallest linebacker so they would have me come blitz off the edge to show my speed… I have to get better at it (cover skills). I don’t really read coverage that much at WILL, and SPUR is different.”
Calhoun said that he anticipates the position change to be permanent going forward with Moeakiola riddled with injuries. Yet if we have seen one theme from Graham’s approach to managing this raw-talented, but dreadfully-inexperienced defense it is that nothing is permanent.
Still, Graham predominantly likes what he has seen from the true freshman linebacker.
“He’s done great at times,” Graham said. “He’s physically really talented. (He) has a great spirit, great energy. (He’s) just not used to the volume of information and what it takes to execute the scheme at this level. He’s gotten better–it’s been steady—but we have to get it to jump up. Obviously all those guys every day they get better. I’d just like the process to be faster.”
Randall had undoubtedly received the most amount of criticism for his play against UCLA, but he internalized the Twitter hate and vowed to redeem himself as the leader and most talented player of the defense.
“It was just a couple of mental errors that led to some missed tackles that then led to big plays and touchdowns,” Randall said. “That’s just stuff that you can correct easily within a week. I just missed a few tackles, probably because I just got banged up a little bit. That’s no excuse for me to miss tackles, but I’ve been tackling since I was born so it’s always come natural to me.”
During the USC game, Randall got back on the right track defensively, with 11 solo tackles and a total of 13. He currently leads the nation in solo tackles per game (9.4) and has cemented himself as one of the cornerstones for this ASU defense.
He will have a chance to continue his bounce-back from his rough UCLA game as the Sun Devils host Stanford on October 18.
Follow Jacob Garcia on Twitter @Jake_M_Garcia or connect with him on LinkedIn.
