Don’t Overlook Idaho

Games like this scare me. Even though I think WSU Football is past the days of looking beyond the cupcakes and then getting stung. I still much more prefer to go into a game being the underdog. It’s what we’re used to…right. You can’t tell me that every Cougar fan who’s watching a game, whether professional or some other sport, doesn’t root for the underdog. But it’s also not exactly the attitude of winners. To be a big time program I (we) need to stop thinking this way. I (we) need to expect nothing less from our Cougs other than a thorough beating handed down to Idaho Vandels this weekend. Although the defense is beat up I think they can do it for a couple reasons.

First of all, I’m still expecting a lot out of the offense this year. Brink is going to be pissed off and take advantage of a far slower secondary than he saw last week. The ole put the ball up for Jason Hill and let him run under it play will be there again. I disagree with the Hawk on his statement regarding Hill having a bad game last week. Hill didn’t have a chance to have a bad game because the ball was usually landing about 10 yards behind him. Even Hill isn’t good enough to create enough distance from a defender that Brink has a +/- 10 yard cushion to throw a “safe pass”. Brink was the only guy that stood out to me as having a bad game. In fact I saw a lot of guys play better than I expected, its just hard to overcome the effects of the QB having that bad of a game. Anyway, I think we are also going to see some yards on the ground between Tardy and Hutsona. Hopefully their knowledge of the play book isn’t all that strong and there will be NO chance of running the option this week.

Second, yeah the defense is beat up but I think we are going to see some back-up guys trying to prove themselves. The healthy guys are all very solid, especially the LB’s who are going to take Idaho’s RB Bird out of the picture and make them rely more on their passing game than they want to. I also think that injuries are spread out enough across the D that it is going to be hard for Idaho to pick on one particular back-up. I’m sure Akey has some schemes to make sure this is the case.

Real quick, regarding Cal. I don’t expect they suck as bad as they sucked last weekend. But even if they only sucked half as bad as that…. they still suck. I’m guessing their secondary has been doing tackling drills all week.

I’m off to a good start on the picks, but its a long season:

WSU 45 Idaho 17
ASU 41 Nevada 24
Minn 32 Cal 28
LSU 41 Arizona 21
UO 54 FSU 17
Trees 28 SJSU 10
UCLA 42 Rice 21
Oklahoma 56 UW 17 (UW will finally score after Okla puts in the scrubs)

Ohio State 28 Texas 24

I like the Notre Dame upset Brinkhater. I think Notre Dame is over-rated as badly as Cal. They looked mediocre last week. I’m predicting a bigger upset though…like 32-24 Penn State.