Good afternoon, and happy Wednesday! Yes, I know it’s not Monday. I’ve been quite a bit under the weather since Saturday evening, and we might or might not have a podcast this week due to that. But I was finally feeling well enough to get this finished. I hope you enjoy!

If you do, will you please share it with someone else? GFC.

A few weeks ago, I got a fair amount of stick from some readers for daring to invoke a name that begins with W in analyzing the direction of WSU under first-year coach Jimmy Rogers. I understood – and still understand – why some folks were reluctant to go there; those depths were unfathomable at the time, just six years on from a Rose Bowl appearance, and nobody wants to seriously consider the possibility of something like that happening again. Particularly in this post conference apocalypse world.

After Saturday’s narrow loss to No. 4 Mississippi, we can put those concerns to bed. Being able to go toe-to-toe with a team like Mississippi, on the road, with the talent disparity we faced, is a major flag-in-the-ground moment for Rogers. 

I won’t sit here and try and tell you that WSU’s true ceiling is three points worse than a top-five team; undoubtedly, the close result was almost certainly at least partially a function of coach Lane Kiffin’s team overlooking the Cougs. They saw a squad that got 59 hung on it in consecutive games by North Texas and Washington and the collective thoughts understandably drifted ahead to impending matchups with Georgia and Oklahoma in the next two weeks.

There also have been a number of times in WSU’s history where that sort of dynamic didn’t make one bit of difference and the team got smashed anyway, including when the program was being led by You Know Who. 

But on Saturday, the Cougs didn’t just give off the appearance of being competitive, which is sort of what happened in the Apple Cup – WSU was competitive, leading Mississippi for more than 26 minutes of game time and eventually holding the ball with a minute to go and a chance to drive for a game-winning touchdown.

He and his staff put on a game plan masterclass to get to that point. Offensively, they came in with a clear strategy to possess the ball and minimize drives for Mississippi; defensively, they tried to limit explosives and keep plays in front. These things are easier said than done, and offensive results were spotty in the first half outside of the lone TD drive. 

But defensively, it pretty much worked to a T from the beginning, starting with an epic fourth down stop on Mississippi’s first drive of the game inside the WSU 5-yard line. Forced to execute over and over, Mississippi quarterback Trinidad Chambliss struggled in a way he had not since bursting onto the scene a few games ago. Most notably, it was rare that the Cougars looked completely overmatched. Yes, there were moments where Mississippi’s talent advantage was on display, like when Kewan Lacy was rumbling around and through WSU on his way to 142 yards. There also were the instances when a WSU player was singled up in space, and the poor angles that result from an athletic disadvantage led to poor tackling and big plays.

But those were not the norm, as they were against UNT and UW, and it showed in the final stats: Mississippi’s 439 total yards were its lowest of the season, and its 6.3 yards per play tied for the second lowest.

The total yards were impacted by the offensive strategy, which truly blossomed in the second half. Using an array of short passes and power runs, WSU kept the chains moving for most of the afternoon, piling up 21 first downs while holding the ball for nearly 33 minutes. That included 13 first downs and 19:31 of possession after halftime, and while time of possession is frequently a meaningless stat – you don’t get points for holding onto the ball – in this case, it mattered as part of a cohesive strategy as the underdog.

And it damn near worked.

“We should have won that game,” Rogers said. “Shoulds don't count. I'm proud of their effort. It's kind of a little bit of a sick feeling.”

I’d probably replace the “should” with “could,” but I can’t quibble with the coach feeling that way, particularly since WSU hardly played a perfect game (there were some killer drops, again, by receivers) and it’s not like the Cougars were the beneficiaries of a ton of breaks. There’s absolutely an alternate timeline in which the Cougs walk out of there singing the fight song with an epic, generational win, and if I’m being honest … I’m not sure I actually believed that was possible, heading into the game. 

Belief is an incredibly powerful thing in sports, and it’s clear the players have never wavered in theirs. I obviously can’t say the same thing about myself! Heck, I was at a pumpkin patch for the middle portion of the game; my wife had scheduled without knowing kickoff was so early, and when she asked me if I wanted to stay home, and I was like … nah, it’s fine, I’ll just pause it when we leave, stay offline, and finish it when we get back. “We’re probably going to get killed!” Instead, I ended up listening to it in the car¹ and doing my best to not obsessively check my phone.²

It was such an incredible feeling just to know that an upset was actually on the table. Throughout the game, I was both excited and apprehensive, wondering if it was going to fall apart at some point as it did in the fourth quarter against Washington. It never did. I know Rogers can’t be satisfied with moral victories; as he said postgame, “There's positives for sure, but we lost, and the guys are going to hear that. They just heard that (in the locker room. In competitive sports, there's a winner, there's a loser.”

I get that. But as a fan, I can absolutely be encouraged by a close loss against that team. The losses to UNT and UW had me down bad as a fan, but I’m also more than willing to revise my conclusions as more data comes in. The first two weeks and the last two weeks are making those middle two weeks look like an anomaly and not the norm. The program appears to be growing before our eyes, and if Rogers ends up having the successful tenure we’re all hoping for, I won’t be surprised if we point to this particular game as a major milestone.

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My biggest concerns for the season had to do with the line play on both sides of the ball, because those are the areas where it’s hardest to mask deficiencies. Lots of coaches have made a living recruiting undervalued skill players, but you can’t fake size on the lines. This week, the dudes in the trenches showed up in a big way.

First, the defense. It’s no secret that WSU has struggled with mobile quarterbacks since time immemorial, to the point that it’s sort of a meme now. I came into the game rather terrified of what Chambliss could do to us with his legs, but — with the (notable) exception of one scramble — the Cougars legitimately bottled him up: In eight non-sack rushes, he gained 4, 0, 4, 3, 6, -1, 17, and 4.

That 17-yard TD run on 3rd-and-10 is an irritant, for sure. But I’m choosing to look at the overall good here, which also included three sacks, one of which included a strip fumble that we recovered. All told, Chambliss was credited with 11 rushes for just 15 total yards. To put that in some context, he hadn’t rushed for fewer than 62 yards since taking over for injured starter Austin Simmons, and had gained 71 yards on the ground the week before against LSU. To hold him to such a low total is absolutely remarkable.

I know that it’s a team effort to do that, and I don’t want to minimize the contributions of the linebackers and safeties to that cause. They were huge, also. But if your defensive line is getting dominated, it really doesn’t matter what those support guys do.

WSU now ranks in the top 50 nationally in both tackles for loss and sacks, which gives me some major, major hope for the defense going forward. This coaching staff has obviously done a great job of both identifying guys who can play and coaching them up; there have been injuries up front and it just hasn’t mattered. Turning this group — which ostensibly is less “talented” than last year’s group — into a unit that is ahead of last year’s pace in both of those categories speaks volumes to me about this staff’s ability to coach the technical aspects of the defensive line. I know this is a bit of damning with faint praise. I’m sorry. But when you lose David Gusta to Kentucky, Ansel Din-Mbuh to TCU, Nusi Malani to graduation, Khalil Laufau to Houston, etc. etc., and replace them with some erstwhile reserves + a whole lot of question marks from various lower level programs and still get better results? A lot of that is coaching, man.

Offensively, the ability to run the ball continues to improve. Neither Colorado State nor Mississippi have been world beaters defending the run, but neither was Idaho or North Texas, and we know how those games went. There was reason to wonder what we were in for on Saturday with right tackle Christian Hilborn a surprise scratch with an injury he apparently picked up during practice last week, but reserve tackle Jaydin Caldwell didn’t miss a beat.

Nowhere was it on better display than when Kirby Voorhees took the ball 46 yards to the house nearly untouched. If you take the four sacks allowed out of the equation,³ the Cougars piled up 150 yards on the ground at an average of greater than 6 yards per carry.

You don’t walk into SEC country and hang around if you’re getting shoved all over the place at the line of scrimmage. WSU’s big guys were fantastic.

At first blush, throwing for 218 yards and a couple of TDs on 31 attempts doesn’t blow you away. But when you consider the larger contexts — the game strategy, the game state, the knock on Eckhaus as a QB who will turn it over, etc. — it actually was a pretty damn brilliant performance.

At a school where 300-plus passing days have been the norm for decades, 218 yards doesn’t seem all that impressive. But 7.0 yards per attempt is pretty good, and it represented the second-highest mark of the season. The passing game was effective enough to be a credible threat, even as offensive coordinator Danny Freund played it close to the vest, strategically.

I think it’s worth noting that in order for all that to work, you have to have a QB who is willing to execute within the coordinator’s framework, and Eckhaus was up to the task. This was his second consecutive game without an interception across a span of 59 attempts. He’s completed 68% of his passes in the last two games (even as his receivers have dropped some balls) with four TDs.

His ability to run also played a major part in this. He had three designed carries that went for a total of 32 yards, as well as a number of other scrambles that avoided sacks on a day when he was under quite a bit of pressure.

This was the guy some fans were clambering for at the beginning of the season, and he is not disappointing:

Meanwhile, junior defensive end Isaac “Bobby” Terrell continues to set the world on fire. He’s now got 9.5 tackles for loss, and if you’re ready to have your mind blown, how about this little stat: Last year’s season leader in TFL was linebacker Kyle Thornton with … 7.5. Terrell also has 4.5 sacks, which is only 1.5 behind last year’s leader, Din-Mbuh. Two years ago, Brennan Jackson and Ron Stone Jr. had 12.5 and 11 TFL, respectively. That’s the kind of company Terrell is keeping right now.

I don’t know if Terrell can keep up this pace — it seems unlikely for a host of reasons — but the fact that he’s already done this is, again, remarkable. He recorded just one tackle for loss and zero sacks as a sophomore in a reserve role after posting no stats at all as a freshman over 44 snaps across nine games.⁴ To blow up like this as a junior — ALL AT WASHINGTON STATE — is a development arc that we used to see a lot, but don’t see real often anymore.

And to top it off … he absolutely loves being a Coug.

I can simultaneously appreciate the coaching Rogers is doing to prepare the team for gameday while also remaining baffled at some of his in-game decisions. There were more than a few on Saturday, but two in particular left me scratching my head in a major way.

On the Cougs’ first drive of the game, it appeared on the broadcast that Tony Freeman had maybe converted a first down, but the referee marked him well short of the line to gain. College football has automatic review of questionable calls, but it’s not foolproof — which is why coaches can also challenge plays once a game. No buzz came down from the booth for review, and Rogers didn’t challenge. He should have! There really is no reason to hold that challenge in your back pocket; they almost never get used. If you’re on the road and trying to pull an upset, what do you have to lose by challenging that call right off the bat? There’s only an infinitesimal chance you end up wishing you had it later, and if you’re wrong … well, you’ve lost a timeout in the first half. But if you’re right, who knows where that drive ends up? That’s a gamble worth taking as an underdog.

Then, on the final drive of the game — holding the ball with just over a minute and no timeouts, needing only to get into field goal range to potentially tie it and get to overtime — the Cougars inexplicably ran the ball on first down. If the thinking was “we’ve run the ball well all day and we’ll catch them playing back and break off a chunk,” well, that’s only viable if you’ve got a timeout in your pocket. Otherwise, it’s an insane gamble, and it backfired massively: The modest 6-yard gain from our own 10 took 20 seconds off the clock — or, roughly a third of the total time we had to work with. Inexcusable. We sure could have used those 15 wasted seconds when we were sitting at our own 36 after a pass interference penalty!

This isn’t the first time I’ve scratched my head at Rogers’ game management. It’s worth remembering that he’s both still a young coach — just his third year as the head guy — and that he’s now coaching a team that doesn’t walk in as the favorite nearly every week. He seems like a reflective guy, so I’m hopeful he’ll continue to grow, because I do think he’s passionate about putting his players in the best position to succeed.

OK, so … I’m trying to be measured with my thoughts here. Logic would dictate that since WSU just went on the road and played the No. 4 team like that, they are now ready to go on the road and take down the No. 18 team.

College football, of course, cares not for your “logic.” There are a host of other factors working against WSU, the greatest of which is a second consecutive trip across the country.

Professional football players are almost never asked to do what these college athletes are being asked to do, and there’s a reason for that. Travel is hard on athletes, and within a span of the eight days leading up to this game, the Cougars will have flown 2,000 miles to the Eastern time zone (Friday), played a high intensity and grueling game of football against a quality opponent (Saturday), flown 2,000 miles back to the Pacific time zone (also Saturday), practiced for four days and attended classes (Monday-Thursday), then flown another 2,500 miles back to the Eastern time zone (this Friday) to play another high intensity game against another quality opponent on Saturday.

Add in the fact that we’re not going to sneak up on Virginia — the Cavaliers, coming off a bye, will have just seen us hang with Mississippi, and they don’t have the equivalent of Georgia/Oklahoma waiting on the other side of the game — and it will be much more surprising if WSU is able to turn in another high-quality performance than if they end up with a bit of a dud.

I hope I’m wrong, but I suspect the bodies will not be willing, even if the minds are. And if it is a dud … I honestly won’t think much of it.

Kickoff is set for 3:30 p.m. PT on The CW.