Today’s newsletter is stuff that has been a part of The Monday After for years and years and years, all the way back to my time at CougCenter. But since this thing now resides on a newsletter, I thought you might appreciate getting a couple of smaller mailings — one on Monday that is the column portion, the other on Tuesday that is more of a breakdown — rather than a single massive mailing on Monday. It certainly is easier for me to break it into two!

When you get to the end, I’d love it if you’d give me some feedback about the new approach. 🙂 

No. 18 Virginia 22, WSU 20

What We Liked: Road Warriors

You all know that my expectations for the game were quite low. So imagine my utter joy when, after I was unable to follow the game at all in the first half,¹ my friend was able to turn it on and the Cougs were up, 17-7. I think I said something along the lines of YOU’RE SHITTING ME?? when I saw it.

I understand that this can come off pretty negative, and I promise that I don’t mean it to — my opinion of their chances in the game had less to do with them and more to do with circumstances. I simply try to approach things as evenhandedly as I can, and rationally there was little reason to expect WSU to have a real chance to win this one. There’s a lot of NFL data to support how difficult is is for professional football players to travel from the Pacific time zone to the Eastern; there’s even a little bit of data to suggest that it’s even harder for college athletes, which certainly passes the smell test.

This is what WSU was up against leading into kickoff, having played their last home game on Sept. 20:

To come out of that stretch 1-2 with a dominant win over a future Pac-12 opponent and losses to a pair of top 20 teams by a combined five points is probably a much bigger deal than we all are giving credit for, which I imagine stems from the fact that everyone — fans and players and coaches alike — feels like we very easily could have picked up another win in there.

Don’t be distracted by the 1-2 record. How we got to 1-2 matters. That they were able to do what they did in this stretch, playing three straight games away from home, logging all those miles — which not only take a toll physically, but also mentally when you consider the disruption to classes and such — while also being depleted by injuries along the way says so, so much about these players and coaches. Particularly when we’ve gotten somewhat used to our teams starting to melt down around this time of year under the previous coach.

I’m not sure it can be overstated how remarkable these performances have been, and the players and coaches deserve all the credit in the world for that.

Who Impressed: The D Line

No position group has been harder hit by injuries than this one, and no group played better than this one on Saturday. No Max Baloun. No Mike Sandjo. No Kaden Beatty. No Raam Stevenson. I’m probably even forgetting someone. And even with all that, the Cougs flat out owned the line of scrimmage for three quarters against a team endeavors to run and run and run … and generally has a lot of success at it.

We didn’t quite match Louisville’s defensive performance against Virginia from the game before, but the fact that I can even compare it to what the No. 19 team did at home tells you everything about just how well these guys played:

And that was with the fourth quarter included, which wasn’t horrible but was definitely not at the level they had set for themselves through the first three quarters (kneel downs removed from 4th quarter stats):

Nothing unexpected about that, really. The coaches told us earlier in the season that so much of their strength on the line came from their depth and their ability to rotate pieces and keep them fresh; that luxury is now gone.² But even with that, it’s not like they got completely run over in the fourth. When they needed to hold Virginia to a field goal after the interception, they did just that: Virginia ran the ball six consecutive times, picking up one first down and moving to 3rd and 2 at WSU 14 before the Cougs blew up the ensuing run for a 3-yard loss.

There’s obviously a limit to how many guys you can lose and not have it severely affect you, and I suspect WSU is reaching that limit. But there are WSU teams from the recent past that already would have seen a significant downtick in production with similar injuries along the line. And these guys just keep trucking along.

I think that’s says a ton about this coaching staff. They clearly are able to both identify players who are being undervalued by others and coach the heck out of them. It’s the sort of thing that gets you real excited about what Rogers could build on that side of the ball.

What Needs Work: Scoring Points

I had hoped that this would be an opportunity for the offense to make some progress, and it looked like they did in the first half, scoring a couple of TDs and adding a field goal. Unfortunately, the second half was a mess — just another in a line of long stretches of offensive ineptitude.

If we look at when they were successful — and when they were not — on Saturday, you can draw a pretty straight line between their ability to move the ball on the ground and the ability to score points.

Obviously, that’s not usually the case at WSU, which spent the better part of 50 years or so piling up points by slinging the ball all over the yard. And I’m finding that I need to recalibrate my offensive analysis to account for the fact that we’re just not going to be a team that can throw our way to victory. Yeah, we did that once this year (against San Diego State), but it’s obvious at this point it was a one-off tailored to Jaxon Potter.

Jimmy Rogers and Danny Freund don’t just want to run the ball. They have to run the ball. The good news, of course, is that it is getting better. Now it needs to translate into scoring more than three touchdowns in a game, which the offense has done just once(!!) all year.

Please, let it be this week?

Up Next: Toledo

The Cougars FINALLY get to play another game in Pullman, 35 days after hosting the Apple Cup. Between the long layoff and it being Family Weekend, the Cougs ought to be in for a warm welcome from a decent-sized crowd as they take on a team that I would love to say is not very good but … well, no real rest for the weary.

Most predictive models rate WSU and Toledo as about the same, or even have the Rockets slightly better. On aggregate, they think WSU is two points better at home.

Now, that doesn’t take into account that Toledo has yet to win a game on the road, having lost to Kentucky, Western Michigan, and Bowling Green. But all three were narrow losses, and given that Toledo is a defense-forward team like WSU, all signs are pointing to this one being a bit of a stressful rock fight.

It’s a rock fight that WSU almost has to win, though. The vibes are pretty good after beating Colorado State and showing up against Mississippi and Virginia, but now the Cougs have to pay it off with a strong performance in front of the home crowd if they want the good vibes to grow.

And if a bowl game — any bowl game — is the benchmark this season, putting yourself in a position where you only need to win two of the final four is where you want to be.

We’ll dive deeper into the Rockets on the podcast. But for now, you can put Saturday’s 12:30 p.m. PT kickoff on your calendar. If you’re not lucky enough to be Back Home, the game will be on the CW.

1  We go to a huge multifamily “Autumnfest” every October, and it takes place on some property outside of Eatonville with practically zero cell service. Luckily (or unluckily, since I missed most of the good stuff and got to see the bad stuff), a friend connected to the wifi once we moved toward the house and put YouTubeTV on his phone. Anyway, a great time was had by all (despite the rain) and I brought home a gallon of fresh apple cider. Hooray!

2  I think this pretty clearly showed up in WSU’s failure to record a sack for the first time since Idaho after piling up 10 sacks in the previous three games.