Is Herm Edwards Capable of Turning Around the Arizona State Football Program?

New Arizona State head football coach Herm Edwards spent eight seasons as an NFL head coach — five with the Jets, then three with the Chiefs. As a player, he spent nine years in the league, almost entirely with the Eagles.

As a college football player, it’s rare to play for someone with that kind of experience.

It’s even more rare that your new mentor would have been on the field during the Miracle at the Meadowlands, a historic moment in football history that directly led to the invention of the “Victory Formation,” a play that is now drawn up in practically every playbook across the country.

But that kind of longevity is what Herm Edwards offers as he begins rebuilding the Sun Devils’ football program in 2018.

The 64-year-old Edwards, who was let go by the Chiefs at the end of the 2008 season, isn’t worried about the critics who believe that ASU made a mistake by luring him away from ESPN after an eight-year stint on television.

“Some people will question: ‘Well, you haven’t coached in along time. You haven’t been on the field,’” Edwards said during his introductory press conference in December. “Turn on the TV Wednesday, I’ll be back in studio in Bristol — and I’ll be coaching football, by the way. That’s what I do. I coach football. And I’ve been coaching football my whole life, and that’s why I’m here today because of the vision.”

“There’s something a great former player said here, Pat Tillman. He said, when he talked about passion, he said, ‘It ignites your soul.’ Football ignites my soul. This is what I do.”

Passion is a word that epitomizes Edwards. He is, of course, the man who unleashed the legendary “You play to win the game!” rant following a tough loss to the Cleveland Browns back in 2002.

Edwards hasn’t lost his flare for the dramatic in his time away from coaching. “We don’t huddle anymore in our society,” he said in his first press conference as head coach at ASU. “That’s the problem with it, to be quite honest.”

And don’t forget his response to a reporter who works for Devils Digest: “I’m a Catholic, I’m a Christian,” he said. “Watch out for them Devils.”

Sound bites like those will bring attention to ASU’s program, but Edwards has to leverage that publicity into wins as he brings in recruits and assembles a quality coaching staff.

“Athletes from all over the country should be coming back here,” said Edwards. “Guys in California and Los Angeles should be coming here. Why is this not the destination? Why can’t it be?”

“That’s my job. That’s my job to go into those homes and tell those parents, ‘This is the place you want to send your son because when he leaves here, he’ll be fully ready to deal with anything that comes across his way.’”

In regards to coaching, the man who made it to the playoffs four times as an NFL head coach has a specific question he believes his assistant coaches should be able to answer while working with their student-athletes.

“When I turn the tape on and watch your player play, what are you doing to help this guy? That’s what I want to know,” revealed Edwards. “Can you make this guy a better football player?”

“You can’t give him talent. But fundamentally and mentally, is he a better football player because he played under your watch? That’s all I want to know. Can you develop the players we have here? That’s all I care about.”

With 247Sports’ #36 recruiting class for 2018, Edwards and his staff will have their hands full as they try to build the Sun Devils into a consistent winner, something that the school hasn’t accomplished since producing back-to-back winning seasons from 2013-’14.

That sounds like a daunting task, but as Edwards told The Arizona Republic after a sloppy spring game, “That’s the greatness about football. You’re always chasing perfection.”