FanHouse Dirk Koetter

Sad news out of Tempe where Arizona State has announced that former football coach Bruce Snyder has died at the age of 69. Snyder was diagnosed with cancer last June. Snyder coached nine seasons with the Sun Devils (1992-2000) and 20 overall. His 58 victories at ASU are second only to Frank Kush's 176.

Snyder also coached at Utah State and California before joining the Sun Devils. His signature season was in 1996 when ASU held a 17-13 lead over Ohio State in the Rose Bowl before surrendering a last-second touchdown that spoiled their chance at a national championship. He left after 2000 but was remembered for coaching a slew of NFL players, All Americans and ASU greats Pat Tillman, Jake Plummer and Terrell Suggs.

Maybe Matt Jones should get arrested for cocaine possession more often. After cops found him in the back of a truck with the yeyo this summer, the Jaguars former first-round pick has suddenly become something more than an overrated wideout on a team once full of them.

In fact, offensive coordinator Dirk Koetter seems legitimately jazzed about having Jones on the roster:

"Matt has a much greater sense of urgency; much greater attention to detail in the classroom. Matt is acting like he cares and he's applying himself. ... We have to continue to find better ways to use Matt," Koetter said.

Jones leads the Jaguars with 16 receptions for 173 yards. He also leads the Jaguars in the big-play reception category with a 33-yarder, one of only two receptions by a Jaguars wide receiver that has gone for 20 or more yards. Jones also has the other one.

Wow. This spring Pro Football Weekly assured us that Jones "can all but kiss Jacksonville goodbye." Now, with Jerry Porter reviving the "huge upside, no production" empty promises he made famous in Oakland, and Troy Williamson battling injuries, Jones is the guy in Jacksonville.

Take a quick look at the stats put up this year Jacksonville Jaguars receiver Reggie Williams, and they don't look all that impressive: 38 catches, 629 yards. At first glance, those look like the numbers of a role player, not a star.

But Williams' average of 16.6 yards a catch was topped by only four wide receivers in the league who caught more than 35 balls: Santonio Holmes, Joey Galloway, Greg Jennings and Terrell Owens. Williams also had 10 touchdown catches, the most any Jaguars player has ever had in a season. And more advanced stats indicate that Williams wast the ninth-most effective receiver in the league on a per-play basis. Not bad for a guy who some had labeled a bust in his first three years.

First-year Jaguars offensive coordinator Dirk Koetter deserves a lot of the credit for the way the offense got production out of Williams in 2007 that he lacked in his first three seasons. But the Jaguars got to the playoffs, where they'll play the Steelers tonight, in large part because Koetter's game plans have been run-first, pass-second. That was especially true the first time the Jaguars played the Steelers, when Fred Taylor had 147 rushing yards, Maurice Jones-Drew added 69, and Williams caught just one pass for three yards.

The Steelers will load up to stop the run tonight in an effort to prevent a similar outcome to their first meeting, and that means the Jaguars need a lot more than three receiving yards from Williams. He could be the key to the Jaguars' offense today.

You all remember the story. Sam Keller, hotshot Arizona State quarterback beats out Rudy Carpenter for the starting job. And then he didn't as the job was pulled away from him. At the center of it all was an infamous team meeting among a handful of players that swayed their coach to switch quarterbacks.

The Omaha World-Herald has managed to reveal details (after the jump) of that secret meeting. This story remains he-said/she-said unless all parties talk about what happened, but it's interesting to see what about Keller prompted teammates to abandon him and their coach to go along with them (at least, according to the story).

Details after the jump.

Symbolic of Arizona State's decline the last three years, former Arizona State star tailback Loren Wade was found guilty of second-degree murder Thursday. Wade shot and killed teammate Brandon Falkner in March of 2005, apparently in a fit of jealousy.

Prosecutors claimed Falkner was shot because Wade saw him talking to his girlfriend. Falkner was 25.

Wade faces a maximum of 22 years in prison when he's sentenced.

There's a cost to killing a man in cold blood, and Wade's going to pay it here.

At one point he was a promising sometimes-starter as a freshman before a benefits issue and the murder charge derailed his career. In his absence the Sun Devils struggled to run the ball on offense until they finally found a reliable tailback last year. Falkner's murder, Wade's benefits scandal and murder arrest and the Keller/Carpenter quarterback situation all contributed to the termination of former coach Dirk Koetter.

Strangely, the ASU Athletic Department decided to play with fire again in hiring the controversial Dennis Erickson to be their new football coach. Wherever he's gone, suspicious program behavior has followed. Somehow we don't think Arizona State is out of the woods, yet.

Going in to this weekend's match-up between Arizona State and Colorado, one coach is 2-0 this season and the other is 0-2, despite playing a Division 1-AA team to start the season. But the difference in their records isn't the only thing separating Arizona State's Dirk Koetter and the Buffaloes' Dan Hawkins.

Although the two coaches' careers have intertwined, they couldn't be more different, writes the Arizona Republic, " Dirk Koetter is a CEO type, like Donald Trump. Dan Hawkins is a philosopher masquerading as a coach, like Phil Jackson."

But as the past few Lakers' seasons have proven it takes more than Zen to win games...