The Monday After: WSU flexes on Toledo

One of the truly odd aspects of playing as an FBS independent is that it’s hard to nail down exactly what it is that you’re playing for. There’s no conference title to chase, and because it is 2025, the spectre of transfers means you can’t even let yourself get too excited about the development of any particular player without acknowledging the potential that he’ll be gone by December and you’ll never see it come to fruition in Pullman.

Last season, a strong start offered a glimmer of hope that we were playing for a spot in the CFP. But when the collapse was complete, the team’s real motivation had come into focus: Just about everyone was actually coaching and playing for a payday somewhere else. 

Which leaves fans wondering what, exactly, we are supposed to be doing here, since we actually love our school and we’re not ever moving on in the way that coaches and players do. In theory, each game should be its own slice of competitive joy, a chance for us to rep Crimson and Gray once again, regardless of the opponent or stakes. But opponents and stakes actually do matter, and frankly, we all knew coming into 2025 that there would be almost no actual stakes against a hodgepodge of schools, most of whom we will have no relationship with following this final season of conference purgatory.

The players knew it, too. Which is why I’m so utterly impressed by what the Cougs continue to do under Jimmy Rogers.

I’m sure there will be the temptation by a number of casual fans to handwave a three-TD win over Toledo as something that WSU is supposed to do. Don’t be one of them. This was actually a really good and important win for a handful of reasons.

Most obviously and most immediately, it moves WSU one step closer to bowl eligibility, which is really the only actual legit external competitive stake of the season. The Cougs now need just two wins in their final four to get that 13th game, something ESPN’s FPI says we’ve got an 85% chance to do. 

The benchmark for this season – for me, at least – has always been making it to a bowl game. Any bowl game. Bowl appearances certainly don’t hold the same prestige they once did (that’s a whole other conversation), but they still represent a certain line in the sand. For most programs, it’s a line between abject failure and a modicum of success. For WSU, the line is more significant: Getting to six wins means achieving really the only thing we’re allowed to achieve this season and doing so with a first-year coach who was (a) hired late in the cycle, confronted with (b) mass defections, and (c) tasked with selling a school that lacked a conference home and (d) faced an unpleasant schedule. 

Getting to 4-4 was never a slam dunk. Consider the fortunes of Oregon State – the only other school that shares our predicament. After missing the postseason in 2024 by a game under their own first-year head coach Trent Bray – an alumnus whom they believed was going to be a star in that role – they spent a (relative) boatload on NIL to keep a bunch of players (including 1,000-yard rusher Anthony Hankerson) and add a shiny new QB (Duke transfer Maalik Murphy). They expected to take a step forward as they repositioned themselves to lead the New Pac-12. 

Instead, they lost their first seven games and fired Bray before he could even coach a game in a proper conference.

At some point along the way, the Beavers clearly lost the plot. They dropped their first four games by an average of 3 ½ TDs, and though they rebounded with close losses to Houston and Appalachian State, an embarrassing loss at home to Jake Forest was just too much to stomach, and the change was made.

I point this out because the Cougars had a chance to end up on a similar path after the losses to North Texas and Washington. Sure, WSU already had a couple of wins in their pocket, and that’s a significant difference, but anyone who watched those two losses would be forgiven if they thought there was a decent chance WSU might be heading completely off the rails. Some of us might have even said things about Rogers that already look very stupid.¹ Unlike Oregon State, the Cougars not only righted the ship, they continued to improve. Their competitiveness at Mississippi and Virginia in October – while suffering from significant injuries on the lines – stands in stark contrast to OSU’s uncompetitive showings in mid-September at Texas Tech (in which they trailed 45-0 midway through the 4th) and Oregon (they were within a TD for most of the first half, but collapsed and trailed 38-7 in the early seconds of the 4th).

Saturday’s win over Toledo was another significant step in that improvement process. Being competitive in losses is certainly better than being uncompetitive, but it only matters if the team can bring that same level of play against lesser opponents in order to secure wins. They did that on Saturday, using a big second quarter to force Toledo to chase the game before salting the win away in the fourth in a way that was very much the opposite of the final frames of the previous two weeks.

Oh, and by the way: They did this while getting NONE of their injured linemen back AND ALSO adding all-everything defensive end Isaac Terrell to the injury pile after he picked up a knock at some point last week. Yes, Toledo was missing their best running back, but c’mon – I’m not about to shed a tear for the Rockets’ bad fortune when ¾ of our starting defensive line was out as well as two reserve defensive tackles. Toledo’s backup running back ran all over Kent State the week before, and the Cougs utterly shut Toledo down in a way that only Kentucky had in week 1:

In so doing, WSU accomplished one more important thing: Continuing to show that we will be a force to be reckoned with as we transition to our next iteration. Many predictive metrics had Toledo ranked ahead of us heading into the game, and the Rockets were a 1.5-point favorite at kickoff. They were viewed as one of the better G5 teams out there, and all WSU did was hand them their worst loss of the season. 

That’s a flag in the ground against a team that, like it or not, is now a peer – right next to the flags that have already been planted following wins over San Diego State (still the Aztecs’ only loss this season) and Colorado State. Those things matter, particularly for recruiting. Rogers gets to walk into recruits’ living rooms and say, “Look at what we did with one hand tied behind our backs!”

There’s a great opportunity to plant yet another big flag on Saturday in Corvallis. Let’s separate ourselves even further and get one step closer to that bowl game.

1  I hope I never live down comparing Rogers to Paul Wulff, because that would mean that Rogers has been awesome. Nothing would please me more than being forever known as the idiot who not only gave up on Mike Leach in early 2015 but also the guy who stupidly thought Jimmy might not be able to coach.