Arizona State Sun Devils

ASU Football: End of Season Wrap-up, Part One

Published Jun. 30, 2017 6:28 p.m. ET

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The 2016 college football season has come and gone for ASU, and it is time to look back and breakdown the whole season for ASU football.

Looking back, the first part of the season was a hoax for ASU football fans. ASU faced an FCS team in NAU, a high-powered offense with no defense in Texas Tech, a program that has always gotten beat up on in UTSA, and a Cal team that no one expected to be any good. Those four wins weren’t that impressive, yet the hype around a 4-0 ASU team was loud.

Those first four games could have easily been a completely different situation for the Sun Devils. What people forget is that ASU barely beat Texas Tech and UTSA. If ASU’s defense doesn’t come up big at the end of those games then instead of 4-0, the team is 2-2.

The 2-2 record would have been a better record for the team. Instead of heightened expectations around the whole program, including inside the locker room, the fan base is more realistic to what this team can accomplish. But, unfortunately for the Sun Devils, they started out 4-0 and the thought of possibly being in the Pac-12 championship game was alive in everyone’s minds.

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Looking back, Kalen Ballage’s eight touchdown performance wasn’t a true showing of what he could do. Ballage’s eight touchdown performance arose more from a situation then based off of Ballage’s ability.

The Sun Devils were facing a terrible run defense in Texas Tech and they had introduced a brand new formation for ASU in the “sparky formation.”

Because of all these factors, it isn’t surprising that Ballage had such an awesome running performance that night. But taking away from that game that Ballage was an amazing running back that would lead the way for ASU’s offense wasn’t fair to him.

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