Defense Makes a Stance in Second Scrimmage
On a hot and muggy Saturday morning the Sun Devil defense was cool and collected, dominating the offense for large parts of Saturday’s scrimmage. The players in Maroon were however able to find some success scoring two touchdowns and ending one drive in a Thomas Weber field goal.
“I thought it was good on both sides,” said Head Coach Dennis Erickson. “The biggest thing is starting fast and I thought defensively they started extremely fast with that first group. I talked about that yesterday – starting fast at a football game and we did that on defense. Obviously we didn’t on offense, but I thought as the scrimmage went along there were some awfully good things on offense.”
Danny Sullivan, who looked very sharp in the last week of practice, didn’t have a particularly good scrimmage. The senior signal caller was 11-26 for 96 yards, but did throw the only touchdown strike this morning – a 14-yard score to Gerrell Robinson.
Sullivan’s backup Brock Osweiler, who scored on a one-yard touchdown, fared better going 5-11 for 117 yards, in large part due to two catches by Robinson for 35 and 39 yards respectively. The sophomore wide receiver paced his teammates with four catches for 116 yards. He did fumble the ball after a 35-yard catch.
The rushing game amassed 104 net yards, distributing the carries fairly evenly among six tailbacks. Freshman Cameron Marshall led the group with six carries for 23 yards, while Dimitri Nance had the longest run of the day, 20 yards, but finished with just 21 total yards on four carries. The running back group had three fumbles, two by Jarrell Woods and one by Marshall.
On defense Vontaze Burfict led all players with seven tackles, a sack and a pass breakup. Sacks were also recorded by Jamarr Jarrett, Jamarr Robinson (.5) and Will Sutton (.5). Ryan McFoy, Travis Goethel, and Keelan Johnson all had pass breakups. McFoy also recovered the Robinson fumble that was forced by LeQuan Lewis. James Brooks had a forced fumble as well.
Thomas Weber converted on his two PAT’s, as well as on a 25-yard field goal, and also had two punts of 45 yards each. Trevor Hankins had punts of 45 and 50 yards, while Bobby Wenzig had punts of 35 and 25 yards respectively. Kyle Williams, albeit not with live tackling, scored on a 79-yard punt return.