



The Arizona State football program officially introduced former Cincinnati Bengals head coach Marvin Lewis to their staff Wednesday afternoon. He’ll be joining the Sun Devils as a special advisor, providing oversight and evaluations of multiple aspects of the program.

“He’ll analyze our opponents as well as ourselves,” head coach Herm Edwards said. “He will analyze coaches, it starts with me, game strategies, things we try to do to become better as a football team, he’ll have an overview of all that.”

“He’ll be in direct communication with myself as far as how we practice, how we do things, to make sure that we always are trying to get better, and it starts with the football coaches. I think our staff is really excited about Marvin being in the building.”

Lewis has long-established connections with Edwards and ASU athletic director Ray Anderson, as well as family ties to the university and the area in general.

“It gives me an opportunity to assist and give back to people who helped me along the way,” Lewis said. “I have a long-said relationship with Herman, as well as Ray Anderson- for over 20 years with Ray Anderson, so it’s a great fit for me.”

“My daughter, Whitney, went to school here in ’03 and then got married here in 2012, and I think we purchased a home here in 2014. My wife’s not going to be very far from her grandson, so this makes it all simple.”

The now 60-year-old former head coach was 131-129-3 in his 16 seasons leading the Bengals and was the 2009 AP coach of the year.

However, he has not worked at the college level since coaching Pittsburgh University’s linebackers in the 1995 season, but looks forward to the opportunity to return to this level.

“I’m excited about it,” Lewis said. “The energy that young people have around, and my role is different now with that, but it’ll be fun just to be around his young coaches that he has that aspire to do great things in their careers.”

Of course, Lewis is referencing the restrictions he’ll have pertaining to actually being able to coach players one-on-one. But he believes he’ll be able to make plenty of an impact in advising the coaches and providing them with new perspectives.

“There’ll be a lot that I can hopefully add to the coaches to help them coaching their players,” Lewis said. “There’s a lot of different ways to do things, and that’s the one thing that having to come into a situation like that, you’ve got to be a little careful about. They’ve been doing things here great, and I’m just an asset to it.”

ASU now boasts a staff rich in NFL experience, between guys that have coached and/or played in the league.

According to Edwards, there are 57 years of league experience between just him and Lewis alone.

That, in addition to guys like former Pro Bowler in linebackers coach Antonio Pierce- who Lewis coached for a season in 2002 when he was the defensive coordinator of the Redskins- as well as recently inducted hall of famer Kevin Mawae make up what should be an appealing staff for recruits to play for.

“When you have a coaching staff, and members that have actually played in the league or coached in the league, that’s big,” Edwards said. “We said this is the pro model. Our model is about education and football.”

Lewis, for his part, will look to play a large role in helping that coaching staff live up to its potential in developing the talent that comes into Tempe.

“Hopefully, I have a big hand in being a resource and a sounding board,” Lewis said. “If I can help just a little bit, the main thing is hopefully I can help us win a football game or two more than we were supposed to, and that’s the thing coaches want to do.”

Given that one of the biggest parts of his role will be advising college coaches, Lewis was asked about the challenges they face today. While initially hesitant to discuss the question, he ended up going into great detail about one common challenging aspect of current college coaches face.

“I just think that there are time restraints on college coaches, I think that’s the number one thing,” Lewis said. “It does restrict the relationship and the ability for a coach to really help a young man grow to become a man…we’ve got to do everything we can to help mentor them and bring them through that part.”

Of course, there are many cases in which coaches don’t even get to mentor players for a full three years, the minimum amount of time one must spend at the NCAA level before entering the NFL draft.

This is in large part thanks to the NCAA’s new transfer portal, which many Sun Devils have taken advantage of in recent months following Edwards’ first year as head coach.

“I think the unintended consequences of the portal are coming to college football and really set it back some for these young kids,” Edwards said, “because I think a lot of them are realizing once your name goes in there and you declare, it’s like pro football’s free agency- not a lot of buyers.”

“So now you’ve put yourself in a position where you think you’re going to get recruited again, and that’s not the case, because most schools are out of scholarships. So, in a lot of these guys cases, they’re going to have to go down a division, or they’re going to have to graduate, which is fine.”

Specific to ASU’s situation, Edwards suggested that the environment of competition could drive people out who need to make the most of their remaining years of eligibility.

“You’re always going to have some losses in college football,” Edwards said. “A lot of it has to do with the environment.”

“For us, it’s very simple, it’s about competition. You don’t get to play because you’re a senior. You’re not going to play because you’re a junior. You’re going to play because you earned the job, and I think the more we bring in players with that type of attitude that want to compete, I think some of the players that were here are feeling the pressure of ‘oh, these guys that are coming in are pretty good, they’re going to get some of my playing time and I maybe need to transfer somewhere else,’ and that’s ok, and we help every single one of them to go find a place to play.”

For now, the Sun Devils are focused on working with the players who did remain on the team and Lewis stated that he’s already begun reviewing video with defensive coordinator Danny Gonzales.

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