Seventeen years ago, while Arizona State’s football team trained in a makeshift weight room, recently hired head strength and conditioning coach Joe Kenn sought out one player in particular.
With 12 wins and 12 losses over its previous two seasons, the Sun Devils program was, by definition, average. The player Kenn pulled aside that day was anything but.
Kenn isn’t sure if Terrell Suggs remembers it, but in that introductory conversation, he let the then-sophomore know what his ceiling was if he truly bought in.
“If you just do what I think you can do and what I ask,” Kenn told him, “I think you can have a 20-sack year.