San Diego State handed the Cougs a lesson before the long ride home, and it wasn't just about the scoreboard. The lesson is that this team still hasn't figured out how to win on the road, and that problem isn't going to solve itself on the bus back to Pullman. We've Volleyball leaves it all on the floor in San Diego loss and football both putting in effort that comes up short in the same city, and it starts to feel like a pattern, not bad luck. The volleyball team left everything on the floor in their loss, and the football team did the same thing, but effort without execution still gets you a loss column.
The numbers back up what our eyes are telling us. One win in nine games says more about decisions than talent makes the point clean: you don't lose eight of nine because your players aren't good enough. You lose because the decisions being made before the snap and between the whistles aren't matching the talent on the roster. That's a coaching problem, a scheme problem, and a preparation problem all wrapped into one. The three plays that undid WSU in San Diego gives you the specific moments that broke the game open, and none of them were about getting out-athleted. They were about getting out-thought and out-positioned at the worst possible times.
Here is the specific takeaway: this team is going to lose more games it could have won unless the staff starts making different calls. The talent is there. The effort is there. The margin for error is not. When you're playing a schedule that doesn't give you a soft landing, you need every decision to be sharp, and too many of them have been dull. The bus ride home from San Diego is long, and it should be quiet. The question nobody is answering yet is whether the people in charge are willing to change what they're doing, or if they're going to keep running the same plays and hoping the breaks start falling differently. The Cougs don't have the roster depth to survive that hope. Go Cougs.