Let’s start with the good news for Arizona State — its 28-23 win over BYU on Saturday kept its College Football Playoff hopes alive and keeps the Sun Devils in the driver’s seat for a Big 12 championship.
It is a monster win for the season and the program. At the end of the day, that is all that matters.
But Arizona State nearly gave the game away in the final seconds with an absolutely absurd sequence of plays that may have been the greatest example of a coach outsmarting himself and overthinking the process.
After an interception gave Arizona State the football at the BYU 7-yard line with 58 seconds to play, the Sun Devils ran one play down to the 3-yard line. Instead of just trying to score a touchdown and make it a two-score game with less than 50 seconds to play, Arizona State instead opted to run several plays backward to take as much time off the clock as possible.
It resulted in the Sun Devils moving the ball all the way back to the BYU 49-yard line for a fourth-down play with seven seconds on the clock.
Instead of punting it, Arizona State asked quarterback Sam Leavitt to simply throw the ball as high and far as he could to run off the remaining time.
It seemed to work. The clock hit zero and Arizona State fans stormed the field in celebration.
The only problem is that the ball landed in the stands with one second remaining on the clock.
