ASU football's Herm Edwards No. 2 on list of college football coaches on the hot seat
How hot is Herm Edwards' seat as the coach of the ASU football team?
According to one ranking of college football coaches on the hot seat, only one coach's seat is hotter than that of the Arizona State football coach.
CBS Sports' Dennis Dodd recently evaluated the job security of all 131 FBS coaches and Edwards is one of two coaches to receive a "5" rating, which is labeled as "win or be fired."
The other coach? Nebraska's Scott Frost.
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Dodd looked at the eight college football coaches with their jobs on the line this season and had Edwards second behind Frost.
Of the Sun Devils' coach, he wrote: "It's safe to say the NFL model experiment by athletic director Ray Anderson was just that -- an experiment. Edwards is 25-18 as CEO-coach, not bad but not good when combined with a languishing NCAA investigation over prospects reportedly brought in during the COVID-19 dead period. President Michael Crow has backed Edwards, instead blaming departed assistants for the alleged wrongdoing. In the wake, several players transferred. This season has the look of Edwards' last. At 68, he isn't going to be around for whatever the realignment future holds. The school would have been wise to take a postseason ban to start the rebuild."
Last season, Edwards started the year as a "4" in Dodd's ratings, which comes with the caption "start improving now."
After going 8-5 overall with his program embroiled in a recruiting investigation that has led to a lot of players transferring out of the program, it's not hard to see why Dodd elevated Edwards' hot seat rating to a "5" for the 2022 season.
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Other hot seat rankings for ASU's Herm Edwards
We were interested to see how other sites felt about Edwards' status as the Arizona State football coach, to see if perhaps Dodd was being a little hard on the Sun Devils' coach.
It doesn't look that way, judging from some other rankings of college football coaches on the hot seat for the 2022 season.
USA TODAY Sports listed Edwards among 10 coaches on the hot seat for the upcoming season.
Scotty Axson wrote: "Besides the middling results on the field, Edwards is facing the NCAA investigation for alleged recruiting violations. His starting quarterback for the last three years, Jayden Daniels, hit the transfer portal. Once word got out of Daniels' departure, upset teammates promptly trashed his locker and posted it on social media accusing him of abandoning the program. Edwards will also be without four assistants, including offensive coordinator Zac Hill, who resigned amid that investigation. Two other assistants were fired, accused of hosting recruits on campus during a COVID-19 dead period. The point may be moot by the time October rolls around as the Sun Devils face Oklahoma State, Utah, USC and Washington in the first month and a manageable $8 million buyout looms if he is let go before the end of the season."
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BetMGM included Edwards on its list of coaches who could be in trouble in 2022.
Andrew Doughty wrote: "'Some folks are okay with going to the Cactus Bowl and the Sun Bowl. But if anyone here is satisfied with that, I don’t understand it,' Arizona State athletics director Ray Anderson said in November 2017 after firing sixth-year head coach Todd Graham. Two years later, Anderson was in Texas watching Arizona State, under the guidance of second-year head coach Herm Edwards, beat Florida State … in the Sun Bowl. Anderson celebrated the victory on the field with Edwards, a longtime friend whom he picked over coaches with more than zero seasons of college football experience since George H.W. Bush left office, and expressed no disappointment in another mid-level bowl game. Edwards is just 25-17, including 17-14 in the Pac-12. And throughout four years of mediocrity and NCAA investigations, Anderson has refused to comment on his friend’s job security, nor has he voiced concerns about missing 'major bowl games,' as he did four years ago in justifying paying Graham $12.8 million to go away."
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Yahoo Sports had a recent podcast where it looked at coaches on the hot seat and it included Edwards in the discussion between Dan Wetzel and Sports Illustrated's Pat Forde.
Wetzel said: "Herm Edwards at Arizona State, with all the scandals and the transfers out-- I thought-- he's got 40 guys on the roster or something now. Total mess."
Forde replied: "They have just been-- yeah. They've been gutted by transfers, they've had staff turnover, they have an ongoing NCAA investigation. And things had only been going OK for Herm. It was not like he was lighting anything on fire there. So Herm is at or near the top as well."
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Bleacher Report also included Edwards in its early list of college football head coach hot seat predictions.
Brad Shepard wrote: "However, his super-talented team fell to 8-5 in 2021 and wasn't in the realistic mix for a conference title. The development of quarterback Jayden Daniels took a step backward this past year, too. While he has an NFL skill set, he didn't look like a pro passer at any point during the season. To top it off, an ongoing NCAA investigation into recruiting violations led to firings and has muddied the waters. That made a huge impact on recruiting, as Arizona State saw mass decommitments and currently has the nation's No. 89-ranked class. Despite those issues, Edwards told reporters in November that he was "going to be the coach" moving forward. How long he gets to keep making that decision himself may depend on what (if anything) the NCAA finds and how his team progresses in 2022."
How much longer will Herm Edwards last as ASU football coach?
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Reach Jeremy Cluff at jeremy.cluff@arizonarepublic.com. Follow him on Twitter @Jeremy_Cluff.
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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Herm Edwards on hot seat as Arizona State football coach in 2022
