Despite putting up over 450 yards and 38 points, it was far from a clean showing for the ASU offense in their 17-point win over the Northern Arizona Lumberjacks. 

On back-to-back snaps, a 75-yard touchdown pass to redshirt junior Raleek Brown and a 64-yard reception to redshirt senior wide receiver Malik McClain were called back because of penalties. 

“You saw some explosive plays,” Dillingham said. “One of them got called back, but that’s what we saw in camp. That’s what we were looking for. A couple of those plays don’t get called back, and like I said, the dynamic of this game is different.”

Those were the two most prominent examples of a game in which ASU recorded 12 penalties, resulting in an additional 93 yards for the team.

“We’ve had officials in every practice. We haven’t had that amount of holding calls called in all of camp that we had tonight. We got to get that cleaned up,” ASU head coach Kenny Dillingham said. 

Outside of the flurry of penalties on the field, Dillingham said Saturday’s game felt like last year's narrow victory over the Texas State Bobcats, where he felt the offense was never in rhythm, rather feeding off of explosive outbursts to get the win. 

The Sun Devils saw just three drives that lasted over three minutes. They recorded either a three-and-out or a four-play turnover on downs in five of their 13 drives, not including the one-play kneel to end the game. 

They scored in six of those eight other drives.

“Even though we weren’t losing like that game [Texas State], this game had that similar feel of we just weren’t in sync because of how unique they played defense. We couldn’t really run a lot of what we wanted to normally run, which kudos to them,” Dillingham said. 

Like the one-sided nature of many of the drives in this game, the box score tells a similar story. Given the unique defensive schemes, Tyson was rarely, if ever, double-covered, causing him to rack up yards and bring in all but three receptions recorded by primary pass catchers. 

“If it’s not their plan to double our best guy, then we should keep getting him involved,” Dillingham said. “Other teams that their plans is more double-oriented on a player, then yeah, we need more guys involved, so I think that's going to happen naturally throughout the season.”

Tyson ended his day with 142 of ASU’s 257 receiving yards and both of Leavitt’s two touchdown passes, one being a difficult over-the-shoulder snag in the corner of the end zone that Leavitt called “one of the best catches” he had ever seen live. 

Junior running back Kyson Brown was the second most popular target for Leavitt, recording 145 yards from scrimmage on 13 touches, including a 34-yard run on a fake punt during the second ASU drive of the game.

The running back room as a whole kept chugging along without Skattebo, averaging 9.1 yards per carry. Leavitt and K. Brown led the way with 73 yards each, with R. Brown and Kanye Udoh combining for another 57 yards on seven carries. 

Next week will likely see a more balanced attack as the Sun Devils travel to Starksville, Mississippi, to play in their first road SEC game in 13 years, taking on Mississippi State at 4:30 p.m. MST on Sept. 6.