And yet, here we are, welcoming our lone ranked opponent into Martin Stadium/Gesa Field today, and there is yet another chance for the Cougars to do a thing that leads us all to believe something we desperately want to believe: That this team is better than its record and that Kirby Moore is the right guy to lead this program forward.

Our faith in either of those things obviously waned after consecutive infuriating losses to Fresno State and Utah State, but they’ve been resurrected somewhat after last week’s showing against the Beavers. Not because the game was particularly competitive (although the 18-point final scoreline is a tad misleading, given the circumstances of the final TD), but because the suspicion that the quarterback play was truly the root of all the problems seems to have been confirmed by the outstanding play of redshirt freshman Owen Eshelman.

The Broncos are very good. But there’s a strong case to be made that the Beavers are even better, and outside of a couple of enormous explosives in the first half, the Cougars mostly went toe-to-toe with them. This one is at home, there should be a good, pro-homecoming crowd (although these days, who knows), and it feels like the team as a whole got a bit of a confidence boost from Eshelman’s play.

I think it’s telling that the betting line opened just north of 16 points and immediately dropped. The predictive models peg the Broncos as something like 17 points better than WSU, but that’s being informed by the previous iteration of the offense. The betting line is still around two touchdowns, and I think that’s fair. But this sure seems like a game that’s ripe for a proud program to jump up and bite a team that might look at their opponents’ 1-6 record and be tempted to think they’ll walk to victory.

If — and it’s such a huge if — the Cougs can get this one, the next two games are very winnable. They’ll still be a pair of tough games away from bowl eligibility, but it would sure give us a reason to be excited.

And right now, in this season, I will surely take that!

Consensus via TeamRankings.com.

Predictive model probabilities: 17% chance for WSU to win, 48% chance to beat the spread (at +13.5)

Third downs are important for everyone, for obvious reasons. Most offenses try to mitigate third down volatility by trying to be very good on first and second down so that they hopefully aren’t faced with the randomness of conversions. Defense, obviously, usually are trying to do the opposite.

The Broncos are elite at both: They’re 15th nationally in converting third down on offense, and they’re 6th nationally at preventing conversions.

Offensively, the Broncos are very comfortable with getting to third down — largely because they’re just good enough on first and second to repeatedly put themselves in distances on third down that are manageable. This is their offensive “radar” from Game On Paper, and I’ve circled the stuff that matters most here (the numbers are percentiles):