ASU Football: Early Spring Camp Could pay Dividends Early

ASU’s schedule is at its toughest early on in 2020.

A road matchup against USC is followed by a game back in Tempe, but it’s against a Cal team that has some real upside this year.

ASU will not be favored over USC but does have an advantage that could have been forgotten about.

Due to scorching hot temperatures in the desert, the Sun Devils have their spring camp early. They were able to get their spring program in before COVID-19 took over.

No other PAC-12 team was able to complete their spring camp before the pandemic took a toll on every team’s offseason programs.

Arizona State was able to get a certain level of preparation that other teams missed. To make matters even better for their first two games, California teams, in general, had an incredibly tough time getting practice in no matter what.

California teams had to battle statewide regulations as well as local regulations regarding the coronavirus and weren’t able to get in as much work as programs from other states.

Cal, Arizona State’s week 2 opponent, was even the last team to finally get the green light to practice in 75 player groups.

Normally, an offseason where a program is changing coordinators on both sides of the ball would be an even tougher challenge due to this entire offseason getting absolutely bludgeoned by a worldwide pandemic, but since ASU was able to put together more offseason preparation than all other teams in the PAC, that transition could go much smoother.

Of course, USC may come outs guns-a-blazing in the first week of Year 2 under Graham Harrell’s air-raid offense, and that new USC Defensive Coordinator Todd Orlando proves quickly to be exactly what USC needs, and ASU has a tough time in week 1. It’s, of course, possible that Cal comes to Tempe and QB Chase Garbers really steps up along with a Cal defense that takes another step, and ASU can’t handle the Golden Bears.

But it’s worth remembering that ASU did indeed have more time to figure out who they have in the locker room, more time to figure out how they plan to approach their schemes and more time to develop chemistry with the new faces towards the top of the depth charts for the Sun Devils this year. Early spring camp could prove very valuable very quickly in this 2020 season.