Week Four Blog Ballot, Plus Links

Happy Monday.  This week’s blog ballot has been submitted for your perusal, plus this AM’s links, so read on…..

WSU Football Blog Ballot – Week 4

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Alabama Crimson Tide	—
2	Oregon Ducks	1
3	LSU Tigers	-1
4	Florida St. Seminoles	—
5	Georgia Bulldogs	—
6	South Carolina Gamecocks	2
7	Stanford Cardinal	3
8	Kansas St. Wildcats	8
9	West Virginia Mountaineers	-2
10	Notre Dame Fighting Irish	2
11	Texas Longhorns	—
12	Florida Gators	2
13	USC Trojans	—
14	TCU Horned Frogs	3
15	Ohio St. Buckeyes	—
16	Oklahoma Sooners	-10
17	Oregon St. Beavers	—
18	Clemson Tigers	-9
19	Louisville Cardinals	1
20	Michigan St. Spartans	2
21	Mississippi St. Bulldogs	2
22	Nebraska Cornhuskers	2
23	Rutgers Scarlet Knights	—
24	Baylor Bears	—
25	Boise St. Broncos	—
Dropouts: UCLA Bruins, Michigan Wolverines, Arizona Wildcats

SB Nation BlogPoll College Football Top 25 Rankings »

Quick hits on the ballot – Oregon looked REALLY good, and took what some people (like me) thought would be a shootout into a total joke as the Ducks ran roughshod all over the suddenly-Mildcats from AZ. I mean 49-0, really?? Pretty unbelievable. I guess that soft white underbelly of the Oregon preseason schedule really did set them up in good shape heading into the conference season?  Really impressed with K-State too, going in to Norman and winning to go to 4-0.  Bill Snyder is simply amazing.  And how ’bout those Beavs??  I understand now why people like Phil Steele were high on them coming in to 2012, picking them third in the Pac-12 North (the same publication that has been the most accurate of all the prognostications the last 18 years, and the same publication that picked WSU 6th in the north this year).  OSU’s defense has some serious teeth this year, and Sean Mannion looks like the real deal, doesn’t he?  It’s interesting but if you look back to his season in 2011, you can see that the INT’s were too high but that always seems to be the case with young QB’s in their first kick at the can in the Beav offense.  But he threw for over 3,300 yards as he took the reins for the first time, and you could see the promise when he shredded the Coug D for 376 yards and 4 TD’s in last year’s Seattle Game embarrassment.  But the completion percentage is consistently near 65%, and if he cleans up the INT’s this year he could be set for a gigantic 2012.  But the Beavs are definitely a team to watch right now!

Moving on, Caple’s latest practice post reports on the return of Dan Spitz to practice, and it appears that Connor Halliday will get the start again this week.  Where Spitz will fit, I guess we’ll see but truth be told he wasn’t actually setting the world on fire early on this year.  But his return should at least help the depth up front on the O-line and that can only be looked at as a good thing at this point.  And I guess we shouldn’t be surprised about Halliday.  He’s making mistakes that come with everything that’s going on right now but he has been getting the team into the end zone, now 8 TD passes and the team has scored 70 points in his last two starts.  So there’s that.

Finally, Brian Floyd has this look at what happened on Saturday and puts everything together, that perhaps we should have seen this coming with the way the EWU and UNLV games came to an end?  It’s a good read so check it out.   Also, per Floyd on Twitter last night, does anyone remember the absolute mess that was the defensive secondary on the last Colorado TD?  

Before the snap, you can see Chester Su’a towards the bottom of the screen, motioning to get the defensive backs aligned properly as CU was in a five WR set.  But notice how they have four guys lined up at the top of the screen to cover three?

Then at the snap, look at how much room the QB has, even though he runs it to the same side of the field where four members of the secondary were trying to cover three guys!

You have to respect the CU QB to recognize that something was up, as after the game it was reported that he checked into the QB sneak after he saw the alignment.  But he saw how there were four out to the left who were going to focus on covering three, and something was off there.  Chester Su’a had to slide down to try and cover the inside slot WR instead of being able to play more towards the middle of the field.  I mean you look at it, there is ONE defender between the hash marks before the snap, and everyone else is split way out.  Unless Casey Locker was going to blitz from his position covering the other inside WR, there was going to be a lot of space to that side.  And sure enough, we saw what happened.  

But oh well.  It was more than just that last play that cost the team the W.  It was everything that has already been overanalyzed, but the entire fourth quarter, where after holding CU to 243 yards of total offense through the first three, they allowed 270 yards and three TD’s in the fourth quarter alone!

Here’s what’s weird about the final numbers though.  Yes, we saw the Cougs blow the 4th quarter lead.  But if you look at the final stats, did you know CU outgained WSU (531 to 451 yards of total offense), had a better third down ratio (8-16, to 8-18) and vastly outgained the Cougs on the ground (186 to 53 yards) as well as owning a 7-minute advantage in time of possession (33+ min to 26+ min)?  As much as it feels like a blown win, and clearly it was, if you just looked at the final stats without watching the game you would have thought “Huh, close game but CU was just a little bit better on the day”.  Funny how stats can skew the perspective of what actually happened through a full four quarters of football, not just three or three and a half.

All for now.  GO COUGS.