In Salt Lake City Saturday night, ASU football's relentless defensive front put together a performance that rivaled the Sun Devils' harassment of UCLA quarterback Josh Rosen in the team's biggest win of the season.
Against a formidable Utah offensive line, redshirt senior safety Jordan Simone and sophomore linebacker D.J. Calhoun each registered a career-best two sacks, and redshirt freshman linebacker Ismael Murphy-Richardson recorded his first career sack.
Defensive lineman Tashon Smallwood tied a career high with seven tackles.
As cohesive and cooperative as the Sun Devils appear, it's hard to imagine that there isn't any angst toward an offense loaded with highly-touted skill players that have yet to truly gel together.
The efforts and successes of a stellar defense aided by the number of returning veterans in several key positions seem to be taken for granted in the worst way – even a near-perfect outing from the special teams units couldn't compensate for the disappearance of ASU's running game and general ineptitude in the red zone.
Defensive end JoJo Wicker, defensive tackle Demetrius Cherry and linebackers Salamo Fiso and Christian Sam deserve better.
Saturday's sideline story was the inability of ASU's secondary to keep pace with the Utes, and the Sun Devils were plagued by another anemic offensive effort when the running game had all but powered down.
Utah quarterback Travis Wilson threw for 297 yards and completed 72 percent of his passes, two of which went for Ute touchdowns.
His counterpart, redshirt senior quarterback Mike Bercovici, stood on equal ground, if only in one category: spreading the ball around. Each passer targeted nine different receivers.
When Bercovici struggled to prolong drives, airing the ball out 41 total times and completing 20 of them, Wilson was efficient and masterful, comfortably mobile inside the pocket and out, which magnified Bercovici's shortcomings.
It also illustrated just how much the Sun Devils missed Demario Richard, who sat with an unspecified injury and watched his teammates muster up a mere 15 rushing yards.
ASU has yet to come from behind to win a game in 2015, and it desperately needs someone — anyone — to seize the pressure of a high-leverage moment.
Offensively, the Sun Devils converted on just 5 of 18 third downs against the Utes. This season, they have converted on just 40 percent of such opportunities, which ranks 61st among FBS teams.
In the Pac-12, only UCLA, USC and Washington have recorded worse success rates on third down.
The only thing that could possibly be more frustrating? Keeping your defense on the field long after your offense has sputtered through another three-and-out.
This was most apparent in a late September loss to USC, as ASU's pressure up front stifled an All-Conference caliber running back in Tre Madden, recording 11 tackles for loss and two sacks of quarterback Cody Kessler.
In both games, the defensive line worked doggedly to repeatedly force USC and Utah into third and long situations, only for the secondary to crumble in coverage and allow groups of elite receivers to tear them to shreds.
Bercovici told SportsCenter in a phone interview earlier this week that "a game like this defines our program."
The redshirt senior went on to say that the message he sent to the team after the USC game was to "stay true to our fundamentals."
For the most part, ASU did so exceptionally.
That is, until Kalen Ballage fumbled a poor handoff from Bercovici on first down, who gripped the ball incorrectly and was unable to cleanly complete the exchange.
The play started and ended what could have been the go-ahead drive, as Bercovici dove on top of the ball and somehow managed to cough it up before the pileup even began.
The turnover led directly to a 35-yard Andy Phillips field goal, as the Sun Devils symbolically snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and the Utes reeled off 20 unanswered points bookended by two Devontae Booker touchdown runs to seal the win.
ASU has lost more fumbles (eight) than games played (seven) and is 96th in the FBS with a -4 turnover margin.
But that might not have even been the worst of it.
Redshirt freshman defensive back Dasmond Tautalatasi – a week removed from a punt block against Colorado that made him a media darling in the practices that followed – committed a nescient kick catch interference penalty that led to Phillip's first field goal and dragged the Sun Devils down even further.
Bercovici was smart when he said that key to beating Utah on the road would be "not letting the big game get to us."
Unfortunately for Bercovici and Co., the Sun Devils were overcome by yet another big game and its most crucial moments.
Reach the sports editor at smodrich@asu.edu or follow @StefanJModrich on Twitter.
Like State Press Sports on Facebook and follow @statepressport on Twitter.
