TEMPE – One of the hallmarks of Kenny Dillingham’s short tenure at the helm of Arizona State football has been a competitive team. The only blowout loss of the past two seasons – a 32-point defeat at Utah on Oct. 11, 2025 – came as the team was still adjusting to the loss to injury of then-starting quarterback Sam Leavitt.
In the wake of a 55-19 loss to Baylor on Saturday at Mountain America Stadium, however, Dillingham vented a new type of frustration.
The loss to the Bears (4-1, 2-0 Big 12) was the largest margin of defeat since the Sun Devils (2-2, 1-1) joined the Big 12 in 2024, and it came three weeks after a fourth-quarter meltdown at Texas A&M produced what is now ASU’s third-largest margin of defeat in the Dillingham era.
“I’m just as mad as you are,” Dillingham said after the Baylor game. “I feel your pain, probably times 100. I chose to be here. If you think anybody is more frustrated than me, you’re wrong.”
ASU’s largest margins of defeat since joining the Big 12
- 36 points: vs. Baylor (55–19) – Oct. 3, 2026
- 32 points: at Utah (42–10) – Oct. 11, 2025
- 28 points: at Texas A&M (48–20) – Sept. 12, 2026
- 16 points: vs. Arizona (23–7) – Nov. 28, 2025
- 10 points: at Cincinnati (24–14) – Oct. 19, 2024
ASU quarterback Cutter Boley put up a respectable stat line on Saturday, completing 25 of 43 passes for 304 yards, a touchdown and an interception, but it was far from a flawless performance. With so many new faces in Tempe this season, Boley admitted what is now becoming obvious.
“We have to find our identity and what we want to lean on,” the Kentucky transfer said. “It’s just showing back up to work on Monday and keep getting better. We have to keep growing and keep trying to be the team we want to be.”
Two weeks had passed since ASU’s last game, a win against Kansas in London. When the Sun Devils stepped onto the field against Baylor, they should have been rested and prepared as they looked to stay undefeated in Big 12 play.
By the time a minute had passed in the second quarter, they trailed 21-3. It took ASU until the final two minutes of the first half to score its first touchdown, cutting its deficit to 21-13 with just under two minutes remaining.
That eight-point deficit was as close as ASU got the rest of the night, with Baylor outscoring the Sun Devils 31-6 in the second half.
After halftime, ASU’s offense struggled to get anything going. Baylor added a field goal at the end of the first half and a touchdown at the start of the second half to open a 31-13 lead early in the third quarter, but ASU still had a chance to come back.
As the Sun Devils trotted out for their first drive of the half, they found themselves quickly on third down. The Baylor defense got into the backfield on the play, forcing Boley to scramble to his left. After exiting the pocket, Boley attempted to throw the ball away, but the attempt landed squarely in the hands of Baylor’s Ryan Davis, all but putting the game to rest.
Despite that game-sealing mistake, Dillingham focused on the positives of his QB.
“He knows better,” Dillingham said. “Hopefully it doesn’t happen again. I don’t think it will. That was his first real interception on the season. We have to get some of the man throws a little bit more in bounds from that perspective, giving our guys a chance, but I didn’t think Cutter was the glaring issue of the football team in any way, shape or form.”
While Boley’s 25 completions were the most he’s had in 2026, and while the 304 yards passing were his second most, he knew it was not the type of performance his team needed.
“I was sloppy with the ball in the first and second half,” he said. “I made a few poor decisions that really put us behind the eight ball. Things like that can’t happen.”
As the team looks for ways to improve, the first step for the Sun Devils will be putting this game in the rearview mirror and focusing on their last nonconference game of the season, a home matchup against struggling Hawaii (1-4) on Oct. 10.
“We just have to get back to work and find exactly what’s going on,” junior linebacker Owen Long said. “It’s on everyone. It’s not just one person. Everyone’s got to do a little bit better.”
On the plus side, after an unconventional start to the season that saw ASU travel from Tempe to Texas to London and then take a two-week break, the Sun Devils will resume a normal routine.
After the Hawaii game, the Sun Devils will play seven consecutive weeks of Big 12 football. With brutal road tests coming up at Texas Tech and BYU, Dillingham knows he must find answers soon.
“I have to figure out what’s the best recipe for these guys from a schematic standpoint on both sides of the ball to get them to execute right,” he said. “This was the first time we faced a team that really threw the ball consistently down the field. It didn’t work out well for us. We have to figure out what are our best coverages – what do our guys do well?”
After the game, a reporter began to ask Dillingham a question about the high standard he set before the season. Dillingham quickly cut the reporter off.
“No, we’re not hitting the standard that I want,” Dillingham said. “We’re not playing as good as we can play.
“The standard is playing to the maximum ability that the football team you have can play, and to play above that. Pull out more than the team has. I am not pulling out more than this team has. I’m letting our football team down. I am not maximizing the team that we have.”
This article first appeared on Cronkite News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
