Kenny Dillingham Reveals Opinion of Colorado Quarterback Julian Lewis

The Colorado Buffaloes are 3-7 after suffering a loss against the Arizona State Sun Devils, 42-17. Though Colorado coach Deion Sanders and the Buffaloes kept it close for the majority of the game, the Sun Devils ran away with it in the fourth quarter.

The Sun Devils moved to a 7-3 record with an explosive offensive performance. After the game, Arizona State Sun Devils coach Kenny Dillingham had immense praise for Colorado quarterback Julian Lewis.

Arizona State Sun Devils Kenny Dillingham Julian Lewis Colorado Buffaloes College Football Big 12 Folsom Field Deion Sanders — Arizona State head coach Kenny Dillingham holds a news conference on Oct. 27, 2025, in Tempe. | Rob Schumacher/The Republic / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

“We always want to pressure the quarterback. That’s always a goal is to impact the quarterback. Julian’s a phenomenal player. He’s, I mean, he’s an absolutely phenomenal player. His poise in the pocket for a freshman. His ability to extend plays. I was super him. Even locating the locating the ball down the field on scramble drills. Keeping his eyes down the field, a lot of young bucks can’t do that, and he did that. I was super impressed by seeing him live.

“We were actually gonna take a knee there, but they wanted to get another possession for their young quarterback, so we kinda, you know, made eye contact and said, ‘Hey, we just keep playing the game.’ You know, normally we just take a knee, but they wanted to get their guy another series.”

Kenny Dillingham On Not Making It About The Opponent

“Just go play … And celebrate with your teammates. If you celebrate with your teammates, you don’t get in trouble. When you try to like, make it about the opponent, that's when you get in trouble. So we just celebrated with our teammates, but I didn’t think it was too chippy.”

“I thought those guys played good, hard football. They played really, really hard. Those guys are fighting over there for Coach. But I thought it was a clean hard win.”

Kenny Dillingham On Losing The Turnover Battle

“You can’t, can’t lose the turnover battle 4-1. You’re gonna win, five percent of your games, if not less, and that happened to be one of the five percent. We won. So that’s gotta get cleaned up.”

“We gave them short field on turnovers. Defense bailed out the offense. We stole a possession. We lost the turnover battle 4-1, but we kind of stole a possession on a fake punt, which got us three points. So that’s 4-2 if you think about that as like a stolen possession, like a turnover. But, you’re not gonna win many games like that.

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Why Arizona State Was Aggressive Early Against Colorado

“Yeah, the fake punt is something that I thought was gonna be open. Just watching how they, how they aligned, I felt like we were gonna, you know, have a good advantage there. And I said, let’s run it, cause I thought it was gonna be there and we needed momentum. You know, we had no momentum in the game. Needed a shot in the arm and it was a shot in the arm.”

“The going for two was, you know, we were down five, or up five at the time. I didn’t wanna go up six, I wanted to be up seven. Some people will say you do that later in the game, and it’s that fine line of do you do it to start the fourth quarter, do you do it in the third. Right now, to be honest, we’re not scoring enough points for me to wait.”

“If I would have known we woulda scored another touchdown, I may have waited. But I, we’re not consistent enough. Or we haven’t been up to that point. After that, ironically, we got a rhythm. But we hadn’t been consistent enough for me to believe that we were gonna get in the end zone again, so I wanted to make sure that we were up seven or five and play the game from there.”

Arizona State’s Offensive Line Stopping Colorado

“O-line played phenomenal in the second half. When we started getting the right hats on the right hats, we started moving people, running backs saw the holes, and [Raleek Brown] played phenomenal in the second half and the O-line did as well.”

Kenny Dillingham On Defensive Effort To Stop Buffaloes

“That defensive effort was on. I think we had 17, don’t quote me, but 17 possessions, I think they defended. Could be 16 could be 18, but right around there, which is two games. You defend 17 drives, you’re defending a game and three quarters, and to only give up 17 points and 300 roughly yards, in a game and three quarters, is phenomenal. That defense definitely kept us in.”

Arizona State’s Explosive Offense vs. Colorado

“When you can run the football, the game is easy. When you can run the ball and stop the run, you’re gonna win 90 percent of your games if not more. And in the fourth quarter, end of the third, we really started to run the ball well and stop the run.”

“Week 11, better late than never. You know, hopefully we can build on that going into next week,” Dillingham said.

“Yeah, I thought [Jordyn Tyson] did well. He had a huge explosive play in the first quarter that, you know, got us three points,” Dillingham said.

The Colorado Buffaloes will close out the season on the road against the Kansas State Wildcats on Saturday, Nov. 29.