- The offense is MIA and Pullman is letting the Cougs hear it
This absolutely cannot happen. And it’s happening at the worst possible time.
Washington State’s football team is bad right now. Worse, it is boring.
The home crowd – an especially hardy bunch whose members often undertake long journeys just to get to Pullman for the game because they love their Cougs – were loud with their displeasure after the home offense began the game with three feeble drives.
The Cougars have been bad before, but that was the price paid for playing on the sport’s biggest stage, against its best teams. Fans waited out the bad years with the knowledge that when the Cougars were good, winning the Pac-10 in 1997 and 2002, they were among the nation’s best.
This was not part of the deal. The absolute only silver lining in WSU’s forced relegation to mid-major status was that the Cougars would for the first time not have to survive as the smallest fish in a big pond. That their peers would face similar challenges. And that WSU’s superior tradition and experience at the top would set up the Cougars to be one of the lead schools in the rebuilt Pac-12.
That rebuilt Pac-12, a joint salvation project between WSU and Oregon State, formally kicked off for the Cougars on Saturday night. Now the Cougars are 0-1 all-time in a conference they built and look ready to settle into a familiar place in the standings.
How can fans accept this? How long can they continue to care?
The disingenuous, or possibly just naïve counterpoint would be to say that Fresno State might be good! They entered the game with a 3-1 record and, … I’m sorry, I can’t do it. This is not Pat Hill or Jeff Tedford or Kalen DeBoer’s Fresno State. This team came into the game an underdog to a WSU team that’s only offense is a kicker who finally seems to be getting over his yips.
Make no mistake, the conference hierarchy is being established now. WSU’s natural comparison and rival, Oregon State, isn’t dealing with any of this. The Beavers look great! Beyond that, they are rewriting the rules around talent acquisition in this new era.
WSU, which beat OSU 32-8 the last time they played, has no ability to manufacture explosive plays with wide receiver Tony Freeman out for the season.
OSU, on the other hand is headlined by freshman wide receiver Jessee Legree who is tied for the national lead in receiving touchdowns with Ohio State’s Jeremiah Smith, the best college wide receiver since Randy Moss.
Legree has nine receiving touchdowns so far this season, which is three times as many as every WSU player combined.
This kid is obviously an anomaly, but he’s also a reason OSU is likely to finish near the top of the standings this first year in its new conference. His coaches will be able to tell donors and players that this is a program to invest in. Just look! “Come to Corvallis where you’ll play against mighty Boise State for glory and, if you’re good enough, get big money offers from the schools who passed on you out of high school.”
What is WSU supposed to say?
“Come to Pullman. We still don’t win many games, but you’ve got a great shot at playing time! And the fans won’t boo much longer, they’re almost hoarse.”
What is the solution? I don’t know, I don’t get paid as much as the people who are supposed to find the answers to that. Conference rival Colorado State fired its defensive coordinator in the middle of a game on Saturday, and I can’t imagine anything the Rams defense was doing was as embarrassing as those last five minutes of the WSU game.
But what I do feel qualified to say is there is no structural reason for WSU to look this pathetic. This should be getting easier. The Cougars are in a conference again.
After the original Pac-12 disbanded WSU was in the wilderness for two years. Each year the Cougars made a bowl game, one year reaching as high as No. 18 in the College Football Playoff rankings.
They set themselves up well to start this new era in pole position with rivals they chose. If they can’t give fans something to cheer for soon, they will win this new Pac-12 about as often as they won the old one.
- Moore's offense showed some pulse, but the Cougs still left plays on the field
PULLMAN – The beginning of this Washington State season, the gauntlet the Cougars would see to open the Kirby Moore era, was always going to be difficult to parse. They faced three Power 4 teams in their first four games. Two were on the road. One came on a short week.
The Cougars were expected to come away from that stretch with one win and three losses. Thanks to a 34-24 setback to Arizona here on Saturday evening, WSU has fulfilled that much, which is not an indictment on these Cougars. But it does bring up the question that may define the rest of this season.
How many of the problems WSU’s offense is facing are a product of the stiff competition, and how many are the product of self-inflicted wounds that the Cougars would commit against the Pac-12 foes coming up?
We won’t know that much until conference play arrives when WSU hosts Fresno State next weekend, but the early returns on the Cougars’ offense are far from encouraging. Think about this stat, which is now official after Saturday’s game: In three games against FBS competition, WSU has produced three offensive touchdowns and committed six turnovers. The Cougars have lost seven total.
Moore’s team was expected to lose the games it has. It’s the way the Cougs’ offense is costing the team, though, that raises cause for concern.
“We gotta make sure we have a plan that everyone’s on the same page,” Moore said, “going from the half to the third quarter, especially in a tight game like that where our defense is battling, and we gotta find more ways to create explosive plays. We had them in the first quarter, in the first half, and had opportunities there to score even more. And then in the second half, we didn’t. So we gotta look at the film and see where we went wrong.”
In this one, WSU quarterback Caden Pinnick completed 24 of 41 passes for 241 yards, one touchdown and one interception, which came in the first quarter. If an Arizona defender hadn’t bobbled the ball later in the first half, Pinnick would have thrown two. Those were two costly decisions. Consider the other turnover Pinnick lost, a fumble that happened because he tried to throw the ball while being dragged down, and you start to see some of the poor decision-making that has led to Pinnick’s total turnover number this fall: four.
The reason that trend looms large for WSU: Pinnick is committing turnovers because of listless decisions, not because Power 4 athletes are making spectacular plays. Remember his interception last week against FCS Duquesne, when he threw into what became triple coverage downfield? Those are the kinds of poor decisions that have created such a gaping hole in the Cougars’ offense.
It would be one thing if Pinnick was playing a solid brand of football and a freak Power 4 defender, the kind that Arizona and Kansas State can afford, used his strength to jar the ball loose. That would be forgivable. But that’s not what’s happening. It may be Pinnick’s first season of FBS ball, but he has been too slow to differentiate a good decision from a bad one, especially when he’s looking to stretch the field vertically.
That raises a fair question: How can WSU coaches help Pinnick avoid those kinds of turnovers? How can they help Pinnick make better decisions, like in the third quarter, when he slid and gave himself up one yard short of a first down?
“We’re all in this together,” Moore said. “So it starts with me, obviously the offensive staff. Just having that dialogue with him, whether it’s in practice on the headset, reminders, making sure he knows exactly the stipulations, or even there on the third down. We ran the quarterback, he slides. That’s an unfortunate one. It’s a QB-designed run, and so we got to make sure he’s on the same page with that.”
The other problem the Cougars are facing is consistency. Their first drive in Saturday’s game, an 11-play, 71-yard scoring series, was nearly flawless. It ended when Pinnick took a QB keeper 11 yards into the end zone, following a string of perfect blocks, capping a perfect series. If that’s the way the Cougs were going to play in this one, well, the Wildcats should have been on their heels.
But WSU’s offense hardly looked the same after that. In the third quarter, the Cougs put up these numbers: 3 points, 149 total yards, 44 rushing yards, two three-and-outs, four punts and three sacks taken, giving Pinnick 10 sacks taken on the season. That opened the door for Arizona to turn a three-point deficit into a four-point lead, adding two more scoring drives in the fourth frame.
The Cougs can rebound from this. They showed what their offense can look like on that first series, and by showing an increased willingness to take shorter throws, Pinnick looks more than capable of making adjustments. But the biggest one he’ll have to make to avoid meeting the same fate against Pac-12 teams is more about trimming things out of his game.
He’ll have to make better decisions, better calls on when to try to stretch the ball down the field and when to be OK with checking it down. Fresno State’s defense figures to give him more opportunities to show that kind of acumen. But it’s on Pinnick, Moore and offensive coordinator Matt Miller to put themselves in a position where those changes don’t become just possible, they become probable.
“Give Arizona credit; they have a unique scheme,” Moore said. “So there was different variations of zone, whether it was inside, outside. Obviously, the quarterback pin-pull there we scored on in the first quarter. So there were some ID things there. Give them a ton of credit with how fast and hard those guys played. But we gotta have an answer as well with protecting the quarterback and having some more opportunities in the pass game.”
- Cougs hand Utah State a win with an offense that forgot how to finish
Coming off one of its worst losses in recent memory, Washington State stumbled to another humiliating defeat, blowing what appeared to be a comfortable lead and falling 17-16 to fellow Pac-12 bottomfeeder Utah State on Friday night at Maverik Stadium in Logan, Utah.
The Cougars’ offense was unwatchable for the large part of the game, even with coach Kirby Moore taking over playcalling duties from offensive coordinator Matt Miller, who failed to get the unit moving in last weekend’s dismal display against Fresno State. As has been the case for much of what has become a lost season, the Cougars’ defense had a respectable performance squandered and WSU slipped to 1-5 overall and 0-2 in the rebuilt Pac-12 Conference.
Wheels are off
After WSU fell flat last weekend against Fresno State, many fans were rightfully in full-blown panic mode, and Friday’s effort only made matters worse.
The Cougars are off to a disastrous start under their new staff in the new Pac-12. They were expected to be contenders in this refashioned conference with a seemingly soft schedule. WSU saw an opportunity to establish itself as one of the conference’s top dogs. Instead, the Cougs are one of its worst teams. And they face Pac-12 contenders Oregon State and Boise State in the next two weeks. Any bowl hopes are almost certainly out the window.
To restore some amount of faith in the fanbase, the Cougars absolutely could not afford to lose to lowly Utah State (2-4, 1-1). The Aggies, like WSU, have one of the worst offenses in the country. The Aggies lost to FCS Idaho State to open their season. The Aggies were just steamrolled last weekend by Boise State, a team that was supposed to be a good rivalry match for WSU.
WSU needed to win to preserve some hope in this season. But the wheels are fully off now.
Something else needs to change offensively
WSU’s offense was not quite as bad as last week. But it was close. Quarterback Caden Pinnick, the receivers, the run game – nothing was inspiring.
The Cougars had few openings in the ground game, save for Leo Pulalasi’s 54-yard scoring scamper in the second quarter – a play that only happened because a Utah State defender committed an unsportsmanlike penalty after the Aggies sacked Pinnick on third down on the previous play.
Take away that run, and WSU managed 47 yards on 31 carries, good for a whopping 1.5 yards per attempt.
Following the season’s trend, Pinnick couldn’t complete passes downfield. He settled almost entirely for checkdowns or designed receiver screens. He threw 36 passes and finished with just 156 yards and committed a costly turnover – already his seventh of the year. At some point, the Cougars need to consider their other options.
Whatever changes Moore brought as the new playcaller clearly didn’t bring results, as the Cougars’ offense continued to trend downward, putting up the kinds of numbers WSU hasn’t seen since the Paul Wulff era. And it obviously didn’t help that the offense committed 10 penalties, a few of them costly errors in scoring position.
To be fair, it seemed like the Cougars offense operated with some semblance of rhythm for parts of the first half. They scored (field goals) on their first three drives, logged their first touchdown in two weeks and totaled 193 yards – more than they mustered in all of last week’s loss.
Then the Cougs fell apart in the second half, recording only 64 yards, no points, averaging less than 1 yard per carry, 2.2 yards per play and going 1 of 8 on third downs. They led by 13 entering the second half, but couldn’t put any offense together to finish the deal and had no answers when Utah State went ahead in the fourth quarter. The Cougs’ offense practically handed it to Utah State, committing two turnovers (fumbles by Pinnick and tight end Jack Pedersen) in their own territory to gift Utah State a momentum-turning touchdown, and later, the go-ahead score.
Aggies weren’t good, either
It’s not like Utah State found some groove and turned into a competent team. The Aggies also looked miserable throughout this one. Their offense only moved in the second half when they were given two possessions on short fields. Utah State totaled 236 yards, 21 fewer than WSU, which had possession for about 11 more minutes than the hosts.
The Aggies’ quarterback, Grady Brosterhous, completed just 11 of 26 passes for 150 yards. Those are not winning numbers. Many of his throws were just plain off-target. But he got enough chances that eventually, some of them hit.
Utah State averaged 2.9 yards per carry. Again, not a good number. The Cougars’ interior defense mostly held, but could only preserve a low score for so long. Will the offense ever reward its defensive counterparts?
