Arizona State is about to hand a true freshman quarterback the keys and send him straight into one of the toughest environments in the Big 12.
Jake Fette, who only played the fourth quarter in last week’s 28-17 comeback win over Kansas State, appears likely to make his first collegiate start Saturday when the Sun Devils visit No. 8 BYU in Provo, Utah. If that assignment wasn’t daunting enough, it comes on Halloween, in front of more than 62,000 fans at Lavell Edwards Stadium, against a Cougars team that has been especially stingy on defense and nearly unbeatable at home.
BYU enters at 6-1 and 3-1 in the Big 12, riding an 11-game home winning streak that stretches back almost two years. The Cougars’ most recent home game produced one of their biggest results yet: a 28-24 win over then-No.
2 Notre Dame, sealed by a goal-line stand that ended the Fighting Irish’s 16-game winning streak. On the season, BYU ranks 26th nationally in scoring defense at 18.57 points allowed per game and 23rd in total defense at 301.6 yards, second-best in the Big 12 in that category.
For Arizona State coach Kenny Dillingham, there’s only so much he can do to prepare a young quarterback for that kind of setting.
“This is one of the best, most consistent fan bases in college football,” Dillingham said. “This is one of the best, most consistent coaching staffs in college football. When you have the consistency that they have as a program from the top … I don’t think there is a way to (prepare him).”
Fette’s path to this moment came fast. Last week, starter Mikey Keene went down with an injury near the end of the second half, and Cutter Boley, who opened the first six games of the season, struggled in the third quarter.
Fette then took over for the final period and helped spark the comeback. He finished 3 of 6 for 45 yards, but Arizona State scored two touchdowns after he entered and pulled away for the win.
Dillingham’s message to him in that moment was simple.
“It’s football,” Dillingham said. “You’ve been doing this since you were 6 years old.
Go out there and play football. Trust your eyes, and if the read is there to sling it, sling it.”
This week, Dillingham had both Fette and Keene practicing as though either could start, even though the true freshman seems to be the answer for Saturday. The coach is not pretending there’s a shortcut through the process.
“Just continue to work,” Dillingham said. “There’s no way to expedite the progression.
The progression is the progression. You just go to work as hard as you can every day, and try to be the best version of yourself on Saturday.
It’s cliche, but it’s all you can really do.”
Offensive coordinator Marcus Arroyo sees reasons to believe Fette can handle the job. He pointed to the freshman’s ability to make plays with his legs and add a different dimension to the offense.
“Jake can extend some plays with his feet and do some things that some other guys can’t do at that level,” Arroyo said. “That poses a threat, that’s fun for us to see and fun for us to take advantage of when we can still be smart with him.”
Arroyo also praised the way Fette carries himself amid the pressure that comes with this stage.
“He’s just himself,” Arroyo said. “He’s authentic.
He’s kind of quiet, kind of goes by the beat of his own drum. Everybody enjoys when a young guy can come into an environment like we play in, and everyone’s looking at you, and there’s a lot of pressure and a lot of demands and a lot of exposure, and you can still be yourself.
That says a lot about his maturity and his upbringing.”
Fette isn’t the only freshman giving Arizona State a lift. Running back Cardae Mack rushed for 159 yards and scored four touchdowns against Kansas State, doing most of the damage for the Sun Devils’ offense. Those four scores were the most by an ASU freshman since Leon Burton in 1955, and the performance earned Mack Big 12 Freshman of the Week honors.
Dillingham said the pair of young Texans gives Arizona State confidence heading into a road trip that would test even a veteran group.
“Those are two confident humans,” Dillingham said. “It’s kind of crazy to say, ‘Wow, there’s a chance that you have two true freshmen in the backfield together going on the road at BYU.’ Exciting, but if you are going to have two freshmen doing it, those are two guys that you would like to have.”
Mack, for his part, is keeping the same approach this week that he carried into the Kansas State game.
“I don’t look at it as like a crazy game,” he said. “I look at it like a normal game.
I look at everybody as a normal opponent. I don’t take anybody differently.
I take everybody the exact same every week.”
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