With a much-needed off week upon it, the ASU football team got back to basics Tuesday.
In the portion of practice open to the media, many players ran through drills in shorts and the offense ran plays alone without the defense to work on improving their timing back, something that has been a struggle for the Sun Devils to this point.
"Today was kind of a Thursday," coach Todd Graham said. "We worked a little bit on special teams and then fundamentals, so today was a fundamental day for us."
After another loss that got away from the Sun Devils in a hurry, Graham said this week's focus is the basics and making sure everything is right for the final five games of the regular season.
"(We're focusing on) fundamentals and getting better," Graham said. "We have action items that we're working to get better on."
Graham then ran through a laundry list of things his team needs to work on this week, including but not limited to screen accountability and offensive line play.
Graham also included takeaways as a focus of the week, saying the team is doing a great job of stopping its opponents behind the line, but needs to get better at forcing the ball out.
This has become especially important as the Sun Devil offense has fumbled the ball 19 times this season and redshirt senior quarterback Mike Bercovici has been intercepted five times.
With the test of the Oregon Ducks coming in just over a week's time, Graham said his team is ready to use this opportunity to get better and finish out 2015 strong.
"We call this an extra week, not a bye week," Graham said. "We've got an extra week to really, really focus on fundamentals and get better."
Reach the reporter at mtonis@asu.edu or follow @Tonis_The_Tiger on Twitter.
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