The Monday After: Wake up, it's another win!

So, I have a confession to make.

Watching the game from the comfort of my couch … cozied up under a blanket … a couple of beers deep … and with WSU leading 21-3 …… 

I fell asleep.

(I can almost feel Jimmy Rogers’ eyes burning a hole through my soul for this.)

It obviously says something about me and my age that the tail end of a 7 p.m. kick is pushing the limits of my attention, but it also says a heck of a lot about just how thoroughly WSU dominated Louisiana Tech in what would become a 28-3 victory. The effort it took for the Bulldogs to move the ball even just a little bit clearly indicated that the game was all but over at that point, so it’s ok if I close my eyes … just a little bit … just for a minute …

OH HEY THERE GOES KIRBY VOORHEES! Huh. I wonder how long I was out? (I did watch the whole thing again yesterday morning, and it turned out that I missed an interception!)

Anyway, I think there’s also a little something to unpack here about the kind of football the Cougars are playing under Rogers. I closed my eyes thinking it was pretty darn unlikely that either team score for the remainder of the game, and while the Cougars did score on that long Voorhees run, it came on the 12th play of a drive where the first 11 plays covered 51 yards. That handoff into the middle of the line could have just as easily been another three-yard run, followed by a field goal attempt, or a seven-yard run followed by kneel downs.

To put it plainly, that’s not the kind of stuff that makes me want to find a way to fight the heavy eyelids. Put another way, the … uh … “entertainment value” of this team is maybe not what we’ve grown accustomed to over the decades with WSU’s offense-forward program.

[SOUL BURNING INTENSIFIES]

Unfortunately, there’s not really any way for me to talk about this without sounding like I’m whining about wins. I love the wins. I promise I do. And I know that Oregon State fans, for example, would walk over glass to win some games where the offense scores a couple of TDs then dorks around for a couple of quarters while the defense chokes the life out of the opponent.

This is just taking a little getting used to. 

I’m sure Rogers himself would be incredulous at any suggestion that what they are doing isn’t measuring up to some arbitrary standard of “entertainment.” He was brought here to do one thing, and that’s win games. And he’s doing that a heck of a lot better than I thought he would this year.

Not because I thought he was a bad coach – I didn’t feel like I knew enough to say, one way or the other – but because the circumstances were bad enough that I figured any decent coach would struggle: No conference to play in (again), with an even tougher schedule than last year (thanks to travel), and a roster that was turned over even more than has become normal in college football – restocked with a bunch of players from South Dakota State and FBS portal leftovers.

I don’t remember exactly what I predicted at the beginning of the year for this team, but I’m pretty sure it was four or five wins. Rogers now has them on the verge of bowl qualification with two games to play, which is remarkable not only for all the reasons mentioned above, not only because it seemed the season was verging on collapse after the Apple Cup, but also because this team has suffered a biblical number of injuries along the way!

The predictive metrics are even starting to love it: The Cougs shot up 10 spots in ESPN’s FPI rankings (to No. 68) and moved up five spots in Bill Connelly’s SP+ (to No. 69) on the heels of what they did to Louisiana Tech. Being ranked in the high 60s doesn’t knock your socks off, but think about it this way: Both systems now peg WSU as a roughly average FBS team, even with the demolitions at the hands of North Texas and Washington making up 20% of the equation.¹

It really is stunning, at least to me, what Rogers has been able to do. And I think it portends excellent things for the future of WSU football. 

Which means I’m having to embrace being the kind of sicko that takes as much pleasure in the defense rallying to stop a running back for a 1-yard gain as I do for a 20-yard pass completion on offense. You’d think it would be easy. It’s not! I definitely have a personal preference for offense across all my favorite teams,² but especially when it comes to football, where only about 60 minutes of action takes place over the course of 3 ½ hours. Games like Saturday are a grind to watch. The pace is deliberately slow, and there are long stretches where the two teams are doing nothing on offense and just punting it back and forth. If it wasn’t for incredible field position two times and an awful offside on a field goal attempt, we might have been looking at a scoreless game heading into the fourth quarter:

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, of course, and while I’m sure Rogers would say that he’d definitely like to score more points each week, I bet he’d also admit behind closed doors that he’s just fine with scoring two TDs in the first 18 minutes and then watching his defense throw up a brick wall for the final ⅔ of the game. 

Which is exactly what they did. Defensive coordinator Jesse Bobbitt’s crew looked like they were getting Sonny Cumbie’s play calls piped directly into their helmets. Whatever the Bulldogs threw at them, the Cougars were completely ready for: Flea flicker, run left, run right, misdirection, screen passes, reverses, Philly Special … none of it mattered.

This includes the play of the game, which I know isn’t technically “defense,” given that it was a fake punt, but still – the awareness by safety Kayo Patu to recognize this and make this play is bonkers:

That play, of course, was incredibly exciting! Like Ted Robinson and Ryan Leaf on the broadcast, I shouted WHOOOOOOAAAAA!!! from my couch. But those kinds of plays don’t happen that often with these guys. The thing this defense actually does best is simply make routine plays, over and over. Louisiana Tech ran 51 offensive plays; only five of them produced truly negative results (four tackles for loss, including three sacks, plus the interception). This sort of style isn’t super sexy, and it doesn’t cause you to jump out of your seat over and over – but it is highly effective. It’s like Herman Boone’s line in Remember The Titans about the split veer being like novocaine – “just give it time, it always works” – except for defense.

About the only complaint there can be about the play of the defense is the penalties that they commit. But – on Saturday, at least – most of them were of the aggressive variety. I know it drives coaches nuts, but that’s something I can definitely live with. When the rest of it is this good, I kinda don’t care.

Maybe in future years, the offense will develop to a point where it can take advantage of the defense’s excellence so as to avoid games being tense a lot longer than they need to be – or, worse, ending up on the wrong side of a result after an improbable couple of plays leads to just one, solitary TD by the opponent. 

But we’re not there yet, and are unlikely to be for the remainder of this year. Which means I’ll have to keep figuring out how to get geeked about gang tackles on two-yard gains …and be thankful the next game kicks off before noon.

1  It might be less than 20% if they’re weighting more recent performances more heavily, but whatever – you get the picture.

2  If you see me for a beer someday and you’re into soccer, feel free to ask me my thoughts on the dullness of Schmetzerball up until this season.