Plan B being the players you hope develop into Pac-10 level offensive tackles. Specifically the Sun Devils are getting consideration from 6-foot-5 260-pound TE/DE prospect Jamil Douglas. Douglas has been committed to the Utah Utes since early in the summer, is listed on the maxpreps.com website as as TE and DE.

This however doesn’t seem to faze the ASU coaches who are full on recruiting him as an offensive tackle. Again we are forced to recruit a prospect that we HOPE will develop into a starter or solid contributor.

The excuses I’m sure are already beginning to roll in; excuses such as “he’s a great blocker for a TE” “He has a great frame with plenty of room to add “good weight” and still maintain his athleticism and footwork etc.” “He’s a TE so if he’s athletic enough to be a TE then you know he’ll have enough athleticism to be an OT”. “Robert Gallery was a TE who grew into an All-American LT at Iowa, so this guy can be that too.”

Anyway you get the general vibe and the excuses that will follow.

But don’t miss the main point here, like his predecessor before him former ASU Dirk Koetter who couldn’t recruit defensive tackles, current ASU coach Dennis Erickson has the opposite problem, he can’t recruit OTs.

Koetter was always forced to develop prospects or create DTs out of thin air. Examples would be moving the 250-pound Matt Mason to DT, moving LB Jordan Hill to DT, recruiting 260-pound Quency Darly a JC DT who we hoped would add enough weight to be a solid DT for u
The disastrous list for Dirk Koetter and his “project” DTs goes on and on and it eventually led to Koetter’s replacement.

Now we come to Dennis Erickson and his offensive line problems and his three years of project O-Linemen.

Year one Matt Hustad 6-foot-6 246-pounds coming out of high school to sign with ASU, last year it was 6-foot-2 inch 300-pound Adam Tello who manned the RT spot. Tello suddenly grew three inches on the roster once the announcement was made he was going to be the RT. Tello ironically is now back down to 6-foot-3, after being listed at 6-5 last year.

Jon Hargis a player who never played much offensive line in high school developed into the starting left tackle in 2008 and now the disastrous starting left guard of 2009. Shawn Lauvao another 6-foot-3 guard who was moved out to LT this year with awful results.

Then during the 2009 recruiting class cycle ASU goes after the 6-foot-2 Fred Thornton as an offensive tackle prospect. Thornton unfortunately never qualified for initial enrollment so it’s doubtful he’ll ever don the maroon and gold.

Followed by the recruitment of Evan Finkenberg another TE prospect at 6-foot-6 250-pounds we hope will develop in the future All-Pac-10 offensive tackle we haven’t had since Levi Jones during the 2001 season. For nearly a decade ASU has gone without an offensive tackle that could man the left side and stay there. The closest thing to that was Andrew Carnahan who performed admirably as LT but always seemed to struggle upon his switch to RT.

The eerie correlation between Dennis Erickson’s current failures, and Dirk Koetter’s past failures is almost too much to stomach.

While Erickson has been able to build a seemingly strong defense with top notch prospects like Lawrence Guy, Corey Adams, Will Sutton and Vontaze Burfict on defense, his predecessor seemed to be making an impact on offense with his ability to recruit.

Koetter seemed to rebuild the offense around the likes of four-star prospects, Terry Richardson, Sam Keller, Randy Hill, and Elite 11 QB prospect Mike Affleck. Junior college transfers Aaron Austin and Andy Goodenough both rated the number one overall Juco prospects at their respective positions. All came in with all the hype and hope of turning the ASU offense around, but instead turned into complete busts during the Koetter era.

The question now becomes with all the hype surrounding the recent defensive recruiting success Erickson seemingly has had, will a decent defense be able to make up for the lack of offensive fire power the Sun Devils have lacked two complete seasons under coach Erickson?

That question if not already partially answered in 2009, will surely be answered during the 2010 season.

Then you come to the offensive scheme switch that consists of the same three running plays, that turn into six running plays when you flip the first three around and run them the opposite direction.

Shot gun spread Isolation block zone read, shot gun spread one pulling guard zone read, shot gun spread two pulling guards zone read, with no optioning by the QB. Once you eliminate the option aspect of the rushing plan you get what ASU had all season, a predictable running game that any team can stop by overloading one side of the formation.

That type of predictability is completely unacceptable for even Pop Warner level games. Yet this is the type of predictability Dennis Erickson implemented time and time again with this offense.

Now comes the funny part on defense (no I’m not an advocate of Koetter or a fan of Dirk Koetter), SEVEN of the main contributors on this defense are Dirk Koetter recruits. The seven players on this rebuilt defense that helped to carry the load are as follows:

Mike Nixon, Travis Goethel, Gerald Munns, Ryan McFoy, Sai Fahahola, James Brooks (who committed to Koetter before Erickson arrived) and finally Dexter Davis.

Yes Erickson brought in Lawrence Guy and Vontaze Burfict, but can you name another player on the defense that has made a contribution on the team that is on the same level as those seven?

The answer is no, therefore I don’t think it’s fair to give Erickson all the credit for the success we are seeing on this defense. Again not being an advocate or defender of Dirk Koetter, just pointing out the fact that Erickson should not get all the credit in the world for the defense being fixed from the Koetter era.

Now what we do know is that Erickson (like Koetter before him on the defensive line) cannot seem to recruit offensive linemen and is stucking moving guards out to tackle and playing offensive guards across all five of his O-Line spots. Much like Koetter had to move Jordan Hill from LB to DT and attempt to grow D-Lineman from the under-sized David Smith and Wes Evans, Erickson moved Lauvao out to OT and played Hargis and Adam Tello at OT last year.

Now the best two offensive linemen in the state are leaving to go play football out of state Kody Innes and Nick Rowland.

So looking forward to the 2009 season we’re supposed to count on a transfer at QB who completed just over 51% of his passes and threw for 9 touchdowns and 7 INTs in 2008. A 51-percent completion percentage and nearly as many INTs as touchdowns, this is what we are bringing in to be the savior of the program at QB?

Now comes the real problem, Erickson and his good old boy personality, the way he works a room, the way he works a crowd, his dry sense of humor, he’s fan, alumni and media friendly and most importantly booster friendly….he has the full support of the boosters. The people with the deep pockets who would fork out the money to buy Erickson out and hire his replacement LOVE DENNIS ERICKSON.

So Erickson’s job is safe for next season, the pressure is not on him to perform and the likelihood that this program struggles worse on defense and doesn’t step up it’s game on offense in 2010 is pretty high.

This is the direction Erickson has taken this program, this is the same harsh assessment I have given this program the last two years, the same assessments that have me banned from the message boards on ASUDevils.com and DevilsDigest.com.

This is the grim reality no one wants to hear about, the grim realiy no one wants to talk about and most people would prefer to just cover their eyes and point to small recruiting wins here and there as signs that this program is set to turn the corner.

You have to peel away the layers and look deeper into this program than what you hear from the cheer leaders and yes sir media types that we have in this market. Either that or you have to find people who cover the team that actually can actually analyze the product you see on the field and aren’t afraid to give a true unvarnished opinon of where this ASU football program stands.

Now however nine games into the season Dennis Erickson is apparently struggling with who to start. His logic “It’s not about anything but trying to win these last three games and get bowl-eligible.”

Problem is even if ASU wins three games in a row and gets to the magical six win plateau to be Bowl eligible THEY WON’T MAKE IT TO A BOWL GAME. Why? Because the Pac-10 is only contracted to take six Pac-10 teams and the only way a seventh six win team makes it in is if two Pac-10 team make it to the BCS.

Never in the history of the Pac-10 have two teams been selected to play in the BCS and believe me the BCS isn’t going to change that this year. Not with Alabama and Florida or TCU, Boise State in the frey for BCS Bowl games. Even when the Pac-10 had two teams worthy of being invited to the BCS the selection committee has always chosen to ignore two Pac-10 worthy teams. This year there won’t be any Pac-10 teams worthy of two BCS Bowl invites.

Getting back to ASU, Dennis Erickson and his dilemma is stupid at this point in the season. His logic if flawed exposing once again why he needs to be fired at ASU and how he’s not taking his job very seriously. Even if things were to work themselves out ASU is not going to win six games on the season.

The time to start thinking about the future is now, with ASU giving Brock Osweiler three and a half games of experience under his belt as a true freshman. Sullivan’s career at ASU is done and ASU needs to move forward without the old man.

Problem is Erickson’s recruiting efforts have only worked out on one side of the ball and that’s on defense. The offensive line will have to thankfully replace two god awful offensive tackles, Shawn Lauvao and Tom Njunge. Don’t fooll yourself either, Lauvao is as bad as any OT that ASU has had in the last 20 years. All the promise of moving the senior out to the left side blew up in a pile of cold hard reality long ago. A good offensive tackle Lauvao is not, not even close.

Behind him? Well apparently Evan Finkenberg and Kyle Johnson represent the future, but the coaching staff doesn’t have enough confidence in these two. This much is apparent by how hard they’re recruiting two four-star offensive tackle prospects from the JUCO ranks.

Roszell Gayden is the player where the hope for a successful 2010 season resides. A 6-foot-7 310-pound behmoth who would provide an instant anchor at the LT position for the Sun Devils and give whomever the starting QB is next year a fighting chance. Gayden is the type of player this desperately needs, but most certainly won’t get.

The Oklahoma Sooners are one of the teams also in the mix for Gayden along with Oregon and Cal. Three teams the Sun Devils have typically had no chance against when it comes to head to head recruiting match ups for major players like this.

So the hopes for next season ride on one player, oh but it goes beyond just the lack of a good offensive tackle. It spills over into the skill positions as well. Who is the play maker at WR? Gerrell Robinson shows the most promise but he drops as many footballs as he catches. After Robinson it’s a group of unproven players who have failed to stand out at any point during this season.

Then there’s the defense where a play maker at CB doesn’t exist nor does a pass rusher with any sort of speed off the edge. For all the legend and hype surrounding Dean DeLeone’s 4.4 speed in the 40-yard dash from the DE position apparently that doesn’t translate to speed off the edge in pass rush situations. The recruit so highly touted by the coaching staff is another smoke screen on the level of the QB situation.

After zero pass rush you come to the lack of depth at LB. Yes Shelly Lyons, Brandon Magee and Vontaze Burfict are legit play makers who will likely man the three starting roles on the defense next year at the LB position. But if one of those three goes down with an injury the talent behind those three significantly drops off. Oliver Aaron? Derrall Anderson? Please if either of these two were half the players they have alleged to be by the main two Sun Devil sites that promote the program, we wouldn’t be talking about two younger players with less experience supplanting them.

Then there is the offensive scheme conundrum. Is ASU a shot gun zone read option scheme or are they a shot-gun spread passing attack? Running out of the shot gun with no option QB to the zone-read scheme has become all too predictable. It’s pretty idiotic that the option only has ONE option and that’s to hand the ball off to the back.

It gets even more laughable as things settle in during year three of Erickson’s tenure. We hear all the time about how Dennis Erickson prefers a mobile QB closer to a Jake Plummer type than an Andrew Walter type of QB. This was the justification for letting Nick Foles go prior to signing day here in Tempe, Erickson doesn’t want just a plain old pocket passer. He wants a dual threat manning the QB spot.

Why then are the next two QBs most likely to start pure pocket passers? Transfer Steven Threet, and incoming freshman Pete Thomas are both pure pocket passer QBs which will severely limit the option of this shot gun spread option attack. Neither one of these players represents a versatile threat that Erickson claims he was trying to build into the program. In my opinion this constitutes another lie in a long line of smoke blowing bull shit statements that Erickson has made. Given the collective I.Q. level of most Sun Devil fans however, this type of statement and situation goes unnoticed same with the B.S. about Dean DeLeone.

So this is where this program stands after three years of Erickson style football and a clueless A.D. who consistently fails to hold her head football coach accountable for any of his mistakes or B.S. statements. No sign or any future sign of an offensive attack with no real offensive linemen in the wings. No play makers at the wide receiver position, and an offensive scheme in place that doesn’t fit the talents of the players most likely to start within that scheme.

None of this makes sense, but the hope will rise again this off-season. Why? Because if there is one thing Erickson knows how to do it’s bull shit a fan base. Erickson is the people person Dirk Koetter was not, Erickson is a crowd pleaser and a funny guy and “know how to work a room”. He will do a great job of schmoozing the alumni and fan base, because at his age and with his experience that seems to be the only thing left that he is good….shoveling bull shit over the real problems that exist in this program.

Here in this chunk from her Arizona Republic column she shows just how clueless she is:

The Sun Devils’ victory over Washington last week suggested they had reinvented themselves into a team that understood its limitations and worked around them.

Now that win suggests the Huskies were nothing more than a one-trick pony, and that trick’s name is Jake Locker.

It was head-scratching the way Stanford’s offense picked apart ASU, which came into this game ranked first in the conference in total defense and rush defense. The Sun Devils had allowed an average of 57.8 rushing yards per game.

The difference in the game, though, was Cardinal senior Toby Gerhart, a bear of a running back who is strong, quick and knows how to bull-doze a defense. He set the tone with his big-play potential and the balance he adds to the offense. Stanford’s potent passing attack had as much to do with Gerhart as it did with Luck.

What was more surprising was that the Sun Devils offense scored 14, tying its lowest point total of the season against a defense that had given up the second-most points in the conference.

None of what happened last night was head scratching when you consider the level of competition the Sun Devils have faced all season.

ASU’s offense sucks, and that should come as no surprise to anyone, and it should come as no surprise that the Sun Devils were only able to score 14 points.

This team did not reinvent themselves against Washington, they got freaking lucky there were the victims of stupid luck, luck they didn’t even deserve. More likely they should have lost that game against Washington.

This team has already exposed itself as being a god awful bad team and to assume anything else is childish and stupid or in this case flat out bad journalism.

The Sun Devils will NOT WIN ANOTHER GAME THIS SEASON. Plain and simple cut and dry black and white whatever other little cliche you want to use. This is a bad football team with an extremely bad offense and it shouldn’t be taken as anything different than that.

A final record of 4-8…let’s see how that helps the season ticket base after Lisa Love raised the price on tickets for the second time in three seasons. Let’s see how that helps recruiting, given this team is in desperate need of offensive lineman.

Ryan Bass who was supposed to be better than Dimitri Nance is rumored now to be in the dog house, pouting because he’s not receiving playing time, but some how he’s not smart enough to know the offense.

Essentially the same excuse is being made for Marshall this year. He’s getting some time, but apparently he’s just as stupid as Bass and it’s up to Dimitri Nance to carry the load.

Meanwhile Oregon suspends it’s star tailback LaGarrett Blont for the season, and their offense doesn’t skip a beat with a red shirt freshman tailback in their offense. LaMichael James is a red shirt freshman who has 92 carries for 581 yards and a 6.3 YPC average on the season for the Oregon Ducks.

Apparently ASU only recruits the really stupid kids who can’t pick up offensive schemes until their junior or senior years. Because two years in a row now ASU has two RBs, who Erickson recruited that are far more talented than Dimitri Nance who apparently don’t have enough gray matter between the ears to learn this offense.

Another one that has be riled up was all the glowing reports about walk-on running back James Morrison. Oh ASU had finally found the combo back it was looking for. A player who could run between the tackles with good power and had the speed to take it to the outside. Huh Morrison has yet to make it onto the field for a single carry this year and is buried on the depth chart behind DeWitty and Woods.

My assumption is that he’s a second year player who is also too stupid to learn the offense. Either that or the so-called online ASU football experts Chris Karpman and Hode Rabino couldn’t evaluate the hairs on their own head much less the talent that ASU has on their football team.

This so curious to me that ASU struggles to find any level of talent on the offensive side of the ball. There is maybe some promise in Gerrell Robinson if he ever learns to catch the football more than he drops passes.

It’s not just Oregon, Oregon State received a giant contribution from a true freshman last year in Jacquizz Rodgers who rushed for over 1,200 yards for the Beavers and played a key part in their upset over USC. The Beavers have two sophomores and a true freshman starting on their offensive lines as well showing exactly how you can be successful on offense no matter how young your offensive linemen are.

Somehow some way under Dennis Erickson the Sun Devils are unable to get their offense moving with the talent he has recruited. This level of mediocrity has become the norm and it’s acceptable to not have freshman contributed even though they contribute every where else all over the country, or remarkably on ASU’s defense.

There are some passionate fans out there, I’ve gone head to head with you in the message boards, disagreed with 85% of you. I’d like to hear what you have to say, what needs to change.

However I am still completely in awe of one fact, this is Nance’s first career 100-yard rushing performance. Granted he hasn’t been the starter all three years he has been at ASU, but there have been games where he got a lot of carries. To anoint him the full-time starter after a career night in which he barely eclipsed the 100-yard barrier may be a bit premature.

Apparently though he is the best option available with talk of Ryan Bass not knowing the playbook and being a disgruntled me first player. True freshman Cameron Marshall has the most upside of any of the RBs on the roster, but he has yet to show up big in a game. Plus it doesn’t appear Erickson is comfortable going with a true freshman as the primary ball carrier anyway.

Yet again I’d have to disagree with Erickson’s thought process on this. Going with the best talent this season may end up being the best option. Nance getting the most looks because he is the best blocker is the same strategy Dirk Koetter employed with Mike Williams. Williams wasn’t a good ball carrier, but started because he was the best pass blocking option. ASU enjoyed another near record worst rushing attack that year as well.

My argument on this has always been relatively simple, Jim Brown of the Cleveland Browns was known as one of the worst blockers of all time, but one of the best RBs of all-time. The Browns did bench him because he couldn’t block, they took his positive production over his blocking any day of the week.

Nance gets the nod for now, but he gets it with an extremely short leash knowing his past production and struggles in the Pac-10.

I have been an extremely harsh critic of Dimitri Nance over the years but he did play hard tonight so for that he gets a tip of the cap.

The offensive line played well tonight too for the most part. Yes they did have some struggles at times, but overall they put the offense in position to win the football game. So I can muster enough pride to give the offensive line some props for some of the protection they gave Danny Sullivan.

However not everything has changed in the face of the angry Sun Devil blogger. Here I sit making a modest middle class living, while Dennis Erickson makes roughly $1.5-million a year to coach ASU football. Yet from my armchair I could see long ago that Danny Sullivan was going to have the same old accuracy problems that have plagued him throughout his entire career at ASU.

Sullivan started the game 4 out of 17 and finished 10 out of 32 for a pathetic 31-percent completion percentage. Utterly pathetic and completely disgusting given the effort this defense put up to win this football game.

Yes the defense was the victim of big plays down the field by A.J. Green but you could argue they made up for it with their huge turnovers, 14 points off of turnovers that should have helped win the game. Instead Erickson throws Danny Sullivan out there and Sullivan as I predicted long ago bombed horribly.

Here’s more on my Sullivan rant from my QB preview on this blog

I can admit that Nance came out and played one of the best games of his careers, well now that I look at the box score, he played well for one half of football. Nance severely let us down in the second half. At half time Nance had 19 carries for 96 yards, he finished with 25 carries for 88 yards. So Nance gets props for one half of great play and then a second half where reality sunk in for him too.

The bottom line is Erickson has no business whatsoever leaving Danny Sullivan as the starter. If Sullivan is going to lose us games, then I’d rather we lost games with a true freshman who will get better as he progresses as well as gains experience so he can come back and play at a high level next year, or even compete at a high level.

There is no longer an excuse for Dennis Erickson, Sullivan deserves to be benched indefinitely. It won’t happen and it could actually cost the Sun Devils a shot at a Bowl game because of it. Mark it down however, someone needs to step in and override Erickson and see to it that Danny Sullivan is shown the bench.

There is absolutely no reason to destroy the effort of this team with a player who can’t even sniff completing 50-percent of his passes..