- Kirby Moore knows how to pronounce Boise, and how to beat them
PULLMAN – When people look at the word Boise, the capital city of Idaho, most feel compelled to pronounce it with a Z. Boi-zee.
Not Washington State coach Kirby Moore. He knows better.
“We had quite a few guys on the team from Idaho,” Moore said earlier this week, “and they would correct you if you use the Z.”
That’s because Moore’s playing days came at Boise State, the very team his Washington State team is hosting this weekend for homecoming, set for a 3 p.m. Saturday kickoff on USA Network. It’s a full-circle moment of sorts for Moore, who didn’t just play for the Broncos. Many of the connections he used to build his WSU staff came courtesy of his days in Boise.
It’s an intriguing matchup for WSU, which is hosting Boise State for the first time since 2017, when the late Tyler Hilinski came off the bench to lead a wild triple-overtime comeback. It’s also the first Pac-12 matchup between the Cougars and No. 21 Broncos, who find themselves on opposite ends of the conference standings headed into this one.
WSU (1-6, 0-3 Pac-12), which last week pivoted from Caden Pinnick to Owen Eshelman at quarterback to try and snap out of an offensive lull, is looking to end a four-game losing streak. Boise State (5-1, 2-0), which was idle last weekend, has followed a season-opening loss to Oregon with five straight victories.
Still looking for their first FBS win of Moore’s tenure, the Cougars’ offense looked far sharper in a loss to Oregon State last weekend than it ever did in Pinnick’s six games at the helm. Meanwhile, the Broncos’ offense ranks among the best in the country, much of it generated by their rushing attack, No. 8 nationally with 235 yards per game.
What’s on the line for WSU in this one? Mathematically, the Cougars can still earn bowl eligibility, which they have done in 10 of the past 11 full seasons. But to get there, they will have to end the regular season with five straight wins, and that would require them to buck just about every pattern they’ve shown in their first seven games. WSU is about a 13-point underdog in Saturday’s game, according to most sportsbooks.
“At the end of the day, ultimately, it’s about winning, though,” Moore said, “and we gotta do a better job on what it takes to win. This week, we’ll challenge our guys with (their) attitude when they hit the building. What’s their attitude? That’s their choice on a daily basis, and to make sure we’re being as prepared and detailed as we can for the Boise State game.”
Can the Cougars turn things around in such a big way? If there’s a glimmer of possibility, it stems from the change they made at quarterback, which paid off to the tune of nearly 300 passing yards from Eshelman last week. He passed for two touchdowns and added one more on the ground, where he tallied 136 yards against OSU, turning heads and making people wonder: Where was this guy all along?
If Eshelman can turn in similar results Saturday afternoon, his team might have a chance to pull the upset on Boise State, whose defense ranks No. 130 of 138 FBS teams in Pro Football Focus’ tackling grades. The Broncos have only missed a combined 17 tackles in their past two games, though, indicating that coach Spencer Danielson’s team may have cleaned up that issue.
The other issue facing Eshelman and WSU’s offense this weekend: Who will step up at receiver? The Cougars have spent all but 10 snaps this season without star wideout Tony Freeman, who has a torn ACL. Then last weekend in Corvallis, fellow receiver Darrius Clemons went down with an ankle injury, and he’s listed as doubtful for Saturday’s game. That is putting a serious strain on the Cougars’ wide receiver corps, which was already thin to begin with.
That puts three WSU wideouts in the spotlight: Branden Ganashamoorthy, who set career-highs last weekend with 11 catches for 147 yards and one touchdowns, plus Daniel Blood and Tank Hawkins. Those are just about the only receivers WSU has left who have generated any production this season. Depth is a serious concern for the Cougars.
Can the Cougs survive with only those three? Last week, Blood hauled in his first career touchdown pass, finishing with six receptions for 59 yards. He’s been fairly consistent this season. Then there’s Hawkins, whose playing time has come and gone this fall. He played 50 snaps of offense against Oregon State, though, and he will likely be in line for even more against Boise State.
But there could be two other candidates to get more snaps at wide receiver, Moore indicated: West Georgia transfer Jordan Dees and walk-on Caleb Northcroft, who have combined for just 17 snaps of offense. Those two have been low on the depth chart all season. It might be asking a lot for them to jump into action and produce against a ranked team, but that’s the kind of spot the Cougars are in at the moment. At the very least, those two wideouts could give their top three counterparts a breather.
“They’ll get a bunch of reps this week, and then we’ll evaluate where they’re at,” Moore said, “whether that’s 11 personnel, 12 personnel. What gives us the best opportunity to win? And then we’ll play that way.”
Still, perhaps a bigger theme in this one involves Boise State’s running back tandem of Dylan Riley and Sire Gaines, who have carved up just about every defense they’ve faced. Riley is averaging 139 yards per game, which ranks second in the country, while Gaines is going for about 89 yards per game in four outings. Those two have made things easy on quarterback Maddux Madsen, who has 13 touchdowns and no interceptions, taking care of the ball exceptionally well.
The Cougs, whose defense ranks fifth in the Pac-12, will have to tackle those two to give themselves a chance to spring the upset. Their coach may know how to pronounce Boise, but he’ll hope that the next time he says the city’s name in a public setting, he’ll be talking about a win.
- Who starts at QB for WSU could decide the Utah State game
LOGAN, Utah – When Friday night arrives at Maverik Stadium, Washington State players will gather in a tunnel, prepared to head out onto the field, ready to take on Utah State. The Cougars will go through all the same routines, the same rhythms, the same stretches and warmups and jumping jacks that they always do.
Then, when gametime gets closer, they’ll move over to their sideline and get ready for kickoff. Music will blare. Fans will clamor. The visitors will steel themselves to try and end a two-game losing skid.
That’s about where things will begin to look different for WSU.
Washington State is changing up a lot ahead of this game against Utah State, set for 6 p.m. Friday evening on the CW, and all eyes will be on its offense. Thanks to a lowly first five games on offense, head coach Kirby Moore is taking over playcalling duties from offensive coordinator Matt Miller. Moore will have a playsheet in his hand the entire time.
Will Moore make a change at quarterback? Will he pivot away from starter Caden Pinnick, who has lost six total turnovers, and start Owen Eshelman or Julian Dugger? One of those three quarterbacks will jog out onto the field for the Cougars’ first snaps of offense. How much will Moore’s oversight help the team turn things around, help WSU (1-4, 0-1 Pac-12) win what profiles as the most winnable game on its schedule the rest of the season?
To avoid letting Moore’s debut season slip away, the Cougars will have to take down the Aggies, who are also 1-4 overall and 0-1 in conference play. In coach Bronco Mendenhall’s second season, Utah State has looked even worse than WSU on offense, throwing a nation-worst 10 interceptions between quarterbacks Grady Brosterhous and McCae Hillstead. The Aggies’ offense is averaging just 13.3 points per game, a couple ticks better than the Cougs’ 11.8, the latter of which ranks nine spots up from last in the country.
That’s a key reason why on Monday Moore seemed to indicate he’s open to moving away from Pinnick, who has looked anything but sturdy in the pocket for the Cougars. He ranks first in the country with 10 QB-fault sacks, according to Pro Football Focus, which has spawned all kinds of other problems. This fall, WSU has a turnover margin of minus-5, which is No. 122 nationally.
“It really starts with the operational piece from an offensive standpoint,” Moore also said of his QB evaluations this week, “whether it’s a protection check, whether it’s something with a motion. Obviously the defense is game-planning just as much as us, so there’s times where, yes, there’s a first read in a progression, but there’s times where we gotta check the ball down. We can’t make a bad play worse. So that’s the big emphasis. It’s gotta start in practice. We’ll go through that process. That’ll determine what happens on Friday.”
Will this be the week WSU changes its QB? It might stand to reason that since the Cougars are changing one big thing about their offense, their playcaller, they could get a better read on Pinnick. But if Pinnick looks the same, still looks turnover-prone with Moore calling plays, perhaps the Cougs would feel more comfortable pivoting away from him at that point.
Regardless of which quarterback Moore and Miller decide on – Dugger has played sparingly in his one-plus seasons with WSU, while Eshelman has yet to take the field in any meaningful capacity – the Cougars get the challenge of facing an Aggie defense that ranks fifth in the Pac-12 in scoring defense, allowing 25 points per game. In their one win of the season, they held Troy to just 10 points.
Which QB is best suited to take on that defense? It might depend on what the Cougars want at the position. If they feel most comfortable with the experience of Pinnick, who started all last season at FCS UC Davis, they might stick with him. If they want to stretch the field, they might go with Eshelman, who might have the best arm on the team. Or if they want a jolt of athleticism and playmaking on the ground, they might pivot to Dugger.
Either way, a lot rides on this game for WSU. If the Cougars can find a way to eke out a win, they could save their season and make bowl eligibility look somewhat possible. That would extend their bowl streak, which stands at 10 of the last 11 full seasons. If not, they’ll fall to 1-5, continuing the program’s worst start since 2010. At that point, bowl eligibility would be the least of the concerns for the Cougs, who would have to find something to salvage from a lost season.
Check out the next couple games on WSU’s schedule: Next weekend, it’s a road game against Oregon State, which has won three straight. Then the Cougars will host No. 23 Boise State, the Pac-12’s best team.
In that way, coaches would do well to make the right call at quarterback – but it will be interesting to see if they make any other personnel changes. After a loss last weekend to Fresno State, in which his team failed to score an offensive touchdown for the second time this season, Moore indicated that everything would be up for reevaluation with WSU’s offense. Could that extend beyond the quarterback position? Will it include the QB to begin with?
“Everyone’s gonna get reps,” Moore said. “I think that’s the most important thing. Everyone’s gotta make the reps count. We’ll see where it’s at on Friday, and we’ll play ball.”
The good news for WSU: The Cougars’ defense figures to feast on this Aggie offense, which has yet to find its footing. Brosterhous and Hillstead have taken a combined 17 sacks, which could mean a big day for WSU pass rushers like Linus Zunk and Matyus McLain, the latter of whom pocketed a half-sack and two tackles for loss last week against Fresno State. Look for the Cougs’ defense, which has played heroically the past several games, to defang a moribund Aggie offense.
But will that be enough to help WSU win its first game in Pac-12 play? That much might depend on who the Cougars roll out at quarterback.
“I think the best thing about football is that you watch the film, you put the game to bed, and then you have a new opportunity that week in order to move on,” tight end Jack Pedersen said. “At least from my point of view, that’s the biggest thing for me. Let’s get the next week going. Obviously, what happened, happened. Let’s get ready to go play Utah State. It’s gonna be a great opponent, and I think we’re all looking forward to it.”
- Owen Eshelman's first start gave Wazzu its best FBS offense yet
PULLMAN – About a day out, it still feels a bit tricky to wrangle Washington State’s last game, a road loss to Oregon State on Saturday evening.
In a 48-30 victory for the Beavers, the Cougars looked better than ever on offense. In quarterback Owen Eshelman’s first start, WSU’s offense scored its season high against an FBS opponent. He unlocked the best in receiver Branden Ganashamoorthy, who finished with career highs in both receptions and receiving yards, and his running ability proved to be an understated part of his game.
That much was obvious to WSU coach Kirby Moore, who earlier in the week decided to bench Caden Pinnick, who started each of the first six games of the season.
“We just had a much better rhythm,” Moore said of Eshelman’s outing and what it provided to the team. “That takes all 11 being on the same page, whether it’s communication, whether it’s in the run game, the RPOs, obviously the pass game. It’s about landmarks and alignments there with the receivers and guys winning versus man and the quarterback trusting them. Today it was much better on first and second down. Third down, obviously did a better job in the second half than the first half.”
Still, it’s a fourth straight loss for WSU, which is now 1-6 overall and 0-3 in Pac-12 play. The Cougars are still looking for their first FBS win. Their defense may have been going up against a juggernaut in Oregon State’s offense, but good luck finding a team that can win a game allowing 48 points (OK, not counting WSU teams in the 2010s).
Where does that leave WSU for its next game, a home matchup with first-place Boise State next weekend? Here are three thoughts on that.
1. Did WSU coaches wait too long to pivot to Owen Eshelman? During Saturday’s game, as Eshelman threw for two touchdowns and rushed for another, that question hit the WSU orbit like a meteor. If Eshelman was capable of this all along, why didn’t Moore look his way earlier in the season, before things had spiraled out of control?
There is likely some level of truth in that sentiment. With Eshelman at the controls, WSU almost certainly beats Utah State. The Cougars could probably have taken down Fresno State. They could have even taken down Washington in the season-opening Apple Cup, especially now that the Huskies have shown themselves to be a shaky team.
Moore and coaches almost certainly stuck with Pinnick for too long, and in all likelihood, that decision cost their team multiple wins. For a proud program like WSU’s, which has made a bowl game in 10 of the last 11 full seasons, that isn’t good enough. Moore and his staff will get well-deserved criticism for riding too long with Pinnick, who the Cougars poured all kinds of resources into landing out of the transfer portal last winter.
But it’s also true that coming out of fall camp, Eshelman was not clearly the team’s best QB. Those honors went to Pinnick. Eshelman looked like he had the most lively arm, but several other factors tilted in Pinnick’s favor: He had a full season of experience playing college football, and with his athleticism, he profiled as a true dual-threat QB. He put all those characteristics on display across those 15 practices in August.
In that way, it’s not fair to criticize Moore for going with Pinnick for the season opener. It made sense for Pinnick to start that game, plus the next couple contests, at Kansas State and home against Duquesne.
That’s why the more salient conversation is when during the season coaches could have looked Eshelman’s way. Was there a spot in there for Eshelman to take over? It may not have made sense for coaches to bench Pinnick after a blowout win over FCS Duquesne, but even in that game, he showed a lot of the same problems that he did in Weeks 1 and 2. His one touchdown pass against Arizona, his only FBS touchdown pass, came in large part because a Wildcat defender fell down in coverage.
Pinnick showed the same symptoms in just about all his outings, in simpler terms. The logic that Moore might have been using might have involved his decision to take over playcalling duties, which he did ahead of the Utah State game: If Pinnick still looks iffy in that one, when we remove one of the variables, then we’ll find the root of the issue and pull the plug.
That logic feels a little wobbly, but if you’re a head coach who invested all kinds of time and resources into earning a commitment from Pinnick and coaching him up, that’s probably a thought that crosses your mind.
2. Eshelman should have gotten more chances to show his talents: For as fantastic as Eshelman looked, carving out 136 rushing yards and another score with his legs, he didn’t get as many opportunities to display his gifts as he could have.
On two fourth-and-short situations around midfield, Moore chose to punt it away. The first was a fourth-and-1 from the OSU 48, with the Cougs trailing 7-0. That became 14-0 one play later, when the Beavs unleashed a 90-yard touchdown pass.
The second was a fourth-and-3 from the WSU 49, with the Beavers up 20-3. One play after that, they jumped ahead 27-3, scoring on an 88-yard screen pass.
After the game, Moore defended his decision to punt in those spots, saying, “I’ve got a ton of confidence in our defense.” But also in the second quarter, he chose to take the ball out of Eshelman and the offense’s hands, opting for a Jack Stevens field goal on fourth-and-1 from the OSU 1. The Cougars got on the board for the first time with that three-pointer, and maybe there’s something to be said for giving your team some confidence by scoring any kinds of points.
But WSU was also an 18.5-point underdog, looking for its first FBS win against a juggernaut offense. The Cougars likely weren’t going to win that game with field goals. Besides, regardless of what happens after those punts, what kind of message does that send to your quarterback?
3. What kind of hope is there for WSU’s rushing game? In Saturday’s game, WSU tailbacks Maxwell Woods, Kirby Vorhees and Leo Pulalasi combined for 26 rushing yards on 13 carries. It was the latest example of their inability to get anything going, which has been augmented by their offensive line, which ranks second-to-last in the Pac-12 in Pro Football Focus’ run-blocking grades.
In fact, WSU’s run-blocking grade of 51.2 ranks No. 127 nationally. Only 11 other teams in the country have had a worse time in that department, at least in PFF’s view.
That makes it hard for WSU’s tailbacks to generate any production. The Cougars’ front five isn’t at full strength, riding with left tackle Maximus McCree in the absence of injured Ashton Tripp, but Tripp has graded below-average in run-blocking anyway.
Whatever the reason, though, the Cougs’ three running backs have left a lot to be desired this season. Here is how they’ve fared in their first six games of the season.
• Washington: 16 carries, 38 yards
• Kansas State: 17 carries, 72 yards
• Duquesne: 26 carries, 248 yards
• Arizona: 17 carries, 59 yards
• Fresno State: 12 carries, 45 yards
• Utah State: 19 carries, 77 yards
All told, the Cougars’ three running backs are averaging 80 yards per game. Trim that down to FBS opponents and the number is 52. We’ve written about this several times before, but it still rings true: Back in December, Moore’s ability to retain all three running backs felt like his top offseason accomplishment.
Now it’s fair to wonder if, with five games remaining, that group can get going in any consistent way. Eshelman’s passing ability figured to open up that possibility, but even with that going, the Cougs couldn’t generate much rushing attack from their tailbacks.
Maybe WSU can expect a big game in that department in mid-November, when it hosts a home game against Colorado State, which now ranks dead last nationally in total defense: 530 yards per game.
WSU doesn’t need to get its running backs going just for the sake of getting its running backs going. It was just one game, but Eshelman showed how skilled he is at running the ball. But the Cougs could lessen the pressure on him by getting more from their tailback trio.
