TEMPE — Moving past the season Cam Skattebo had for Arizona State football will be no small task, and its coaches know that.
Offensive coordinator Marcus Arroyo on Thursday said it takes honesty to tackle the challenge, above all else.
“You got to be able to not pretend there’s an elephant in the room and just be able to be honest and have humility about it,” Arroyo said. “Like, accept the fact that, dude, you guys had a really dynamic, amazing player that performed and did things within the system and did what we asked him to do and you guys led together.”
He said Skattebo and all the players deserve all the credit for what they accomplished in winning a Big 12 Championship and earning the program’s first College Football Playoff appearance, and thinking they could “just move on” isn’t reality.
“You work through it and you celebrate it, and then you do a lot of things in terms of telling them here’s the plan for moving forward,” he said. “I think there’s a lot of ownership … on that because I think that gives credit to people who earned it. … And I think it shows them the humility that you got in regards to like, alright, we got to rebuild and we got to put the thing back together.”
What makes Skattebo so hard to replace?
Besides the 2,316 yards from scrimmage and 25 total touchdowns, Skattebo was the heart and soul of the team, often the loudest voice to start each practice and always the one setting a physical tone in games.
“Whenever you look at the running back, I think it’s the yards after contact,” running backs coach Shaun Aguano said. “We asked for three or four yards and that’s an efficient play. Now, efficient to Cam Skattebo was (get) hit after three or four and then he goes for 30 yards.
“How do you make up those yards in this offense coming up, and who’s going to replace those and hopefully there’s running backs that watched him and that’s the important part is the yards after contact that we can’t make up.”
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With spring camp starting on March 25, transfer addition Kanye Udoh may make the most sense to fill that hole as an upperclassmen fresh off a 1,000-yard season at Army.
Aguano said Udoh has already impressed him with his size at 6 feet and 215 pounds, as well as his professionalism and “downhill, one-cut ability.”
The room also includes all four backups to Skattebo from last year’s group, headlined by speedsters Kyson Brown and Raleek Brown. Alton McCaskill and Jason Brown Jr. also return.
“The competition, I look forward to it,” Aguano added. “It’s the same feeling that you had (in the past), who’s going to be after (Eno Benjamin)? Who’s going to be after (Rachaad White)? Who’s the next guy? And so I think that we’ll have a room that can step up for that and so we’ll see how it goes. But (Skattebo) was special.”
ASU coaches feel community’s investment in Skattebo’s NFL future
Aguano said it’s not media or other football personnel who ask about the running back incessantly, rather it’s the community of fans around the program.
“There’s more fans than anything else that want to talk about him,” Aguano said. “Our guys just move on in the room and prepare like who’s next, but you always get fans around town and in the community that want to ask about him and how he is.
“Especially with the draft coming up in April and, ‘Where is he going to go?’ Shoot, I have no idea. But you know those conversations are always had.”
In addition to the conversations with fans about Skattebo, Aguano said he also has them with scouts who call and want to know about his mental makeup.
The coach said Skattebo brought a more professional mindset to the field last season in addition to the physical tweaks he made to pick up that top-end speed that allowed him to clock 21.8 mph on GPS data, according to head coach Kenny Dillingham.
“I think he matured in all ways. Not only from a physical standpoint that we all saw in spring, but more of a mental and a professionalism that he carried over from the previous year,” Aguano said. “Just watching him grow and develop, I think that he became more of a complete back once he understood what the professional side looks like.”
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