Hello Followers. Hope you had a decent weekend.
As for us at the WSU Football Blog? Well, you can read our Friday post (which included another genius prognostication –that’s an unprecedented 3 game losing streak for moi!), Longball’s one man battle with the blogosphere here, and Seanhawk’s video highlights and low lights here.
And for me personally? Well, this was as depressing a sports weekend as I’ve had in some time.
I mean, first, we lose to UCLA in heartbreaking fashion (at 2:00am, nonetheless try to get to sleep by 3:30am after that!), and then, on Sunday, the Seahawks all but stuck a fork in their Suck for Luck campaign.
Which led me to wonder: With all that is going wrong right now, to what extent might it be possible for us to maybe, just maybe, Make Luck Suck?
Read on.
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Followers, since we’ve reached homecoming week on the Palouse, I thought it both appropriate and timely to quickly re-set what I think are some important facts that have shown themselves this season. And so, without further ado, here they are:
1) This is Year Four of Wulff, but Year Two of the Rebuild of WSU Football
This fact is tough pill to swallow for all of us, I know. And for those of you who object to this notion consider this: NO ONE wants a turn around more than those yahoos who have been blogging about a losing WSU football prgram FOR THE PAST EIGHT YEARS!!!!!!!
But the sad reality is that it took two long PAINFUL years of wallowing in the deepest and smelliest manure (2008, 2009) before we were truly able to start putting Wulff’s guys on the field. And the reason said process took so long?
As we’ve noted here before, the rebuild has taken so long because (a) Wulff didn’t re-build using JC recruits; and (b) Sterk made the Cardinal sin of any athletic director: He hired/fired his football coach one year too late.
Mind you, there were VERY, VERY good reasons why Sterk should not have fired Bill Doba following our 6-6 (woulda coulda shoulda been 9-4) season in 2006. At the same time, ask any AD and they will tell you that the most opportune time to get rid of a coach is when you have a good possibility of being decent to good in their inaugural campaign.
Of course, in Wulff’s case, he was bequeathed a HORRIBLE hand in 2008. And even worse for him, he had NOTHING behind the seniors in that group (like Gibson). NOTHING. So, unlike the best rebuilding situations, where you either win the first year OR the second year is better than the first, Wulff had neither: His first season was really bad, and his second was MUCH WORST than the first!
I mean, if you haven’t done so recently, go back and look at that 2009 team and the results from that season. If there was EVER a team that deserved to be winless in FBS football, it was that stinking team. Not only were we BEYOND TERRRIBLE defensively, we could barely get a first down on offense (let alone score!)
So, truly, when our FRESHMAN last year, Buchannon, Wilson, Mizell, Kaufusi, etc. hit the field last season, that’s when the clock really started to tick on his tenure……
Now mind you, we don’t have to like that fact.
We don’t have to like it at all.
But consider this reality: Notwithstanding Tuel, our sophomores constitute the core of this program. And last I checked, the small majors (Oregon State, Washington State, Utah, Kansas State, etc.) hardly ever win with that type of youth driving their ship. They just don’t.
2) With Jeff Tuel, we’re 5-0 right now and facing Stanford with ESPN College GameDay in Town this weekend
Of course, there’s no way to prove this, but all of us know how many stinking points we left on the field against San Diego State. We also know that we left about 17 or so on the field against Colorado. And last Saturday night, well, we certainly score a couple more touchdowns with Tuel’s legs helping to buy more time, including what happens to the middle of the field when those LB’s have to pinch up to stop #10…
None of that should discount what Marshall has done to date, because (a) he’s played well by any standard and (b) he’s maximized his own potential in a really impressive/admirable way…
But, the fact of the matter is that with Jeff Tuel, we’d be ONE WIN away from bowl eligibility right now and would be seriously in the hunt for a Holiday or Sun Bowl invitation at the season’s mid-point. So, keep in mind the MASSIVE impact of that injury as the season progresses.
3) Without Jeff Tuel, this is an upper division Pac-12 offense
The two teams we have faced have been less than formidable defensively. At the same time, it should be quite striking to you all how little we’ve punted the football this season. So, while every team talks about the “woulda coulda shouldas” each week, there are very few teams out there where you can easily pick out 5 or 6 plays a game that could have EASILY led to 14 to 28 more points. And so, when you add those lost points/opportunities onto the 24, 31, and 25 points we’ve scored ON THE ROAD the past three games, you can see that this offense is almost a juggernaut without Tuel. In fact, as of right now, I think I’d rank us as the 5th or 6th best offense in the Pac-12.
(Put another way, with even a mediocre defense, this offense wins 7 games. And again, that’s without Tuel!)
4) Our defense remains solidly among the worst in the Conference
Notwithstanding the positive opinion of Vince Grippi (which I wholeheartedly disagree with by the way re: The Defense), outside of Arizona, there really isn’t anyone who can challenge us with respect to defensive futility. While NONE of us should forget that sometimes a defensive unit is greater than the sum of its parts, the bottom line is that out of our defensive linemen and secondary players, only two of them really have ANY CHANCE of gracing the field for another Pac-12 school (Long and Buchannon). And, at least in my view, Deone has been a MAJOR, MAJOR disappointment this year.
Meanwhile, where our linebackers are concerned, well, they’re pretty big, they’re pretty fast, and they’re pretty darn good!
But, at the same time, they’re also living on an island that’s surrounded by a bonafide moat of crap!
I mean, take Saturday’s game as a case in point: UCLA was on the field for a little over 20 minutes of the game, but easily scored 28 fricking points!!
That’s freaking BRUTAL!!!
Mind you, we’re not talking about an Oregon type offense that runs 13 plays in 71 seconds: We’re talking about a deliberate offense that is probably going to rank in the bottom third of the Pac-12 in scoring at season’s end. What’s more, the way that UCLA tends to be successful is when they’re on the field enough to wear other teams down (Like San Diego State did to us). But in our game on Saturday, they WERE NOT on the field enough to wear us down! And in that respect alone, our defensive performance was simply pathetic.
Furthermore, consider what “offensive juggernaut” San Diego State has done to teams on their schedule to date: Army: 23 points. Michigan: 7 points. TCU: 14 points. WSU: 42 points.
And again, keep this is perspective: SDSU scored 42 points when we had nearly 500 yards of total offense against them in that game!
I mean, what does the scoreboard look like when we start to confront real challenges moving the football, like we are apt to experience this weekend???
Even worse, ask yourself the following questions: If you take Idaho State and UNLV out of the equation, is this defense BETTER than the team you saw play Arizona, CAL, Oregon State, and Washington last year? And if so, how?
Because in my mind, I think that a good case can be made that because we no longer have Aire Justin (who played GREAT at the end of last year), this defense is NOT better than that group.
Which brings me to my buried lead:
ITS TIME FOR CHRIS BALL TO STEP UP!
After all, no one was harder on Coach Sturdy than yours truly in those early, dark, dark years. But once Sturdy truly started to get the guys in place for “his system”, we’ve started to see what type of offense we can become (and the answer: VERY competitive with the opportunity to be dominant).
But, in Ball’s case, after four years, his group remains BARELY competitive with the weekly opportunity of being completely DOMINATED.
And really, you put an average offense on the field, and this defense represents that of a 2-3 win team with a respectable schedule (tip of the cap to you, Longball).
AND THAT SIMPLY IS NOT ACCEPTABLE AFTER FOUR YEARS OF RECRUITING!
So, the time is now for you to buck up, Mr. Ball.
In your favor, you have a young group of kids who have spent three long weeks on the road, having to face some upstart playmakers who really can get going playing in front of their home faithful.
But, working against you right now is a Stanford team that threatens to blow the doors off this fragile season, as well as the fragile psyche of your players and your assistants who may think they need to look for jobs….
In short, whether it’s Tuel or Lobster at QB, this team needs THREE MORE WINS for a bowl. And it will be YOUR defense that will determine whether or not we reach that goal.
And if we do fall short, rest assured my followers that it won’t be because of offensive playcalling (which was largely TERRIFIC on Saturday, by the way).
It will be because after four years, we failed to recruit and scheme sufficiently ON DEFENSE to keep teams under 24 points a game even when the offense moves the ball (total yards per game), possesses the ball (time of possession), and scores.
All for now. Go Cougs.
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