ASU football ready for modified scrimmage tomorrow (no public viewing)

The Arizona State football team will have its second modified scrimmage of fall camp tomorrow in practice (open to media only).

Unlike the Saturday scrimmage at Camp T, this scrimmage will be more game-like, coach Kenny Dillingham said.

“We’ll all be on the same sideline,” Dillingham said. “So it’ll be more game-like with kickoffs, punts, punt returns mid-series. So we’ll actually play it like a game, as opposed to how we’ve done special teams in the middle. Right, we’ll do some special teams work at the beginning. And then we’ll play like a game with everybody on one sideline.”

I asked defensive coordinator Brian Ward, senior CB Jordan Clark and freshman CB Keith Abney what they are looking forward to and wanting to get out of tomorrow’s scrimmage. Here’s what they said:

Ward: “I know every coach is gonna say we want to be healthy, I can go with every cliche. But I mean, the biggest thing is we want to just continue to take a step forward. We want to continue to get in better shape, continue to put our guys in difficult situations and really try to identify who’s going to bring some dysfunction and guys that we’ve got to make sure start understanding the process a little bit more. And of course we want to stay healthy, but we want to get quality reps and get a quality practice in tomorrow, no matter what.”

Clark: “(I’m looking forward) to getting to put it all on the grass. I think it’s really easy to be good in controlled practice settings. I think that whenever you get a scrimmage, and there is the adversity of subbing guys in and out, getting the call off the sideline when the offense goes tempo. Doing those different things, I think that adds an extra component of difficulty and adversity, and it shows you where you are for real. So getting that real game look is definitely what I’m looking forward to.”

Abney (on what he’s looking to get out of it): “Just working on my techniques and just being sound with that. Make some plays and just be a team player.”

It will be interesting to see how the Sun Devils look tomorrow after an up-and-down start to practice this week.

My notes on today’s and yesterday’s practices: