Jeff Sims’ Expected Role vs. West Virginia Explained

Below is a partial transcript from head coach Kenny Dillingham's Monday press conference.

On Own, Opponent's Run Game

“Yeah, it does anytime you can be a plus one run game, you know. You look at their run game on offense, you know, and they utilize their quarterback in the run game, whether it's direct runs, whether it's, you know, inverted reads, traditional zone reads like they use every bit of the quarterback in the run game, similar to how we use Jeff. A little bit different, but similar last week. I think it definitely alleviates and allows you to have a plus one run. And that's why coach Rodriguez has always won games, is he's dedicated to the plus one run. And we've won a lot of games doing it.”

On Unique Nature of WVU Offense

“I wouldn't say it's similar to Utah. I don't know if we faced a team like them and their scheme yet a little bit, little bit different from that perspective. But they successfully run the ball at a high rate. They threw the ball last week at a really, really successful rate. So like I said, this team is getting better and better and better throughout the year, and it shows.”

On Opting to Practice on Monday

“Yeah, we had good energy out there today. Today was just like a kind of get our feedback. It was only a 10 period, like work the kinks out. So Tuesday's practice of a game week is really good. So I think we worked some of the kinks out today. We hit, you know, we got the thought a lot got to play catch. So I thought the guys’ energy was good, you know, like I told the guys, you know, it's a great opportunity for us to, you know, we did something a little bit different. Thought it was necessary, like, let's go and work now, and hopefully it was a good decision.”

On Responding to Success vs Failure 

“Yeah, we're just focused on, like, from beginning of the year being the best version of us. Like I told the guys, we've been horrible at responding to success. This year, been really good at responding to failure. We have not success. We have not responded to playing good football game or beating a good team well. So we need to do that."

"We need to show this season that we can play a good football game and come back and play another one and stack them. And that's what I'm excited for. I'm excited to see if our guys can go out there play the same passion and energy back to back weeks and stack good football games.”

Read more on why the Arizona State men's basketball team will exceed expectations in the 2025-26 season here, and three major takeaways following a gutsy win over Iowa State here