Not long ago, Arizona State defensive coordinator Keith Patterson gave his players a gold chain.
Not the entire chain, just one link. One for each person. The reason: Keep working and "we'll link up together."
And then:
"We can pull a tractor out of a ditch,'' Patterson told them. "We can pull a truck down the road -- if we can just become a chain. Right now, we're all a bunch of individual links. By the time that first game gets here, we got to be a chain."
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Coming off last season – in which ASU gave up 33.