Arizona State did not just lose to Baylor. It got embarrassed 55-19, fell to 2-2 and gave Kenny Dillingham a pretty loud reminder that trying to run the offense and the entire program at the same time was not exactly working. So Dillingham gave up the play-calling.
Watch What’s Trending Now!
Marcus Arroyo, the offensive coordinator he hired in December 2023, now gets the offense back. Arroyo already helped ASU win the Big 12 and reach the College Football Playoff in 2024, which makes the move fairly simple: when the head coach’s experiment stops working, hand the offense back to the guy whose job it was in the first place.
“NEW: After early offensive struggles this season, Coach Kenny Dillingham is stepping away from play-calling… Arizona State OC Marcus Arroyo will call the shots moving forward,” College Transfer Portal posted on X on October 6.
Marcus Arroyo is hardly some emergency button Dillingham just discovered. He has been Arizona State’s offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach since December 2023, bringing two decades of coaching experience, previous head-coaching experience at UNLV and a long résumé as a play-caller. He also helped Oregon win the Pac-12 and Rose Bowl, so handing him the offense now is less of a gamble and more of a reset.
Dillingham did not try to dress the move up as a minor adjustment. He admitted he had stretched himself too thin after taking over play-calling in the 2025 Sun Bowl.
“I think it was a mistake for me to remove myself from being the head coach,” he said. “I’ve probably pulled away from my strength and what I do well. I’ve probably hindered what other people do well.”
That is the real issue. Dillingham believed his focus on calling plays had taken him away from managing the defense, special teams and the overall identity of the program.
Arroyo did not make the switch sound dramatic either. “When the head ball coach says he needs something, you fall in line,” he said. “Whatever he needs, he’s gonna get.” Dillingham’s five-game run as play-caller produced a 2-3 record, with ASU held to 20 points or fewer twice.
There is some irony in that because Dillingham has been through this before. In 2023, Beau Baldwin opened the season as Arizona State’s offensive coordinator and play-caller, but after a 29-0 loss to Fresno State, Dillingham took those duties away from him. Baldwin was gone after one season, and Arroyo replaced him. Back then, Dillingham’s answer to a broken offense was more control. Now, it is less.
The problems did not suddenly appear in 2026. In September 2025, Dillingham was already talking publicly about adjusting his calls based on personnel, short-yardage struggles and red-zone issues. He also acknowledged that the staff had to do a better job helping the offense finish drives and create better leverage.
Then Baylor turned those concerns into a full-blown collapse. Arizona State had fought back to 24-13 by halftime, but Baylor opened the third quarter with a 77-yard touchdown drive. On ASU’s next possession, Cutter Boley threw an interception, giving Baylor the ball at the Sun Devils’ 40. Five plays later, it was 38-13. Arizona State answered with a field goal, only for Caden Knighten to break off a 75-yard touchdown run on Baylor’s very next snap. In barely a quarter, an 11-point game became a 45-16 rout.
By the end, Baylor had 564 total yards, including 244 on the ground, while Arizona State went just 4-of-15 on third down and turned the ball over three times. It was not one bad call or one bad drive. It was a team-wide breakdown, and Dillingham’s response was to step away from the offense and get back to managing the entire program.
Now Arizona State Has to Prove the Reset Actually Works
Arizona State does not get much time to wallow in the Baylor mess.
Hawaii comes to Tempe on Oct. 10, and Dillingham has made it clear he does not want his team simply burning the tape and moving on. He wants the Sun Devils to sit with the loss, figure out why the assignments broke down, why the tackling disappeared and why the offense kept stalling in key situations. His message is that there is no one dramatic fix coming. Instead, ASU is trying to clean up a long list of smaller problems while Dillingham steps back from play-calling and gets more involved with the entire team again.
The timing makes that reset even more important. After Hawaii, Arizona State heads into a much tougher stretch with No. 11 Texas Tech and No. 8 BYU both waiting on the road later in October. Dillingham has already promised “significant improvement,” and his teams have responded to ugly losses before, including beating No. 7 Texas Tech a week after getting crushed 42-10 by Utah in 2025. Now he needs another response. Hawaii is the first test, but with the schedule about to tighten up fast, Arizona State cannot afford for the Baylor collapse to become the start of a trend.