Its hard to believe, but Football Friday is actually upon us. Now that the plane is fueled and the Cougs are heading to Auburn, its time to break down the game. As Brinkhater sees it, the keys to the game are amazingly simple:
1) Can we score?
If you look at Auburn’s defense, you will see a team that is LOADED with pro-caliber athletes and bodies. At the same time, Auburn currently is facing injuries to their D-Line, have an inexperienced secondary, and have two LBs suspended for this game. In other words, the cupboard is RIPE for an offensive juggernaut to really make this game interesting. But will we?
If you look at all of the pre-season prognostications, the fact that the Cougs are picked so low in the conference is because many people think that we will NOT be nearly as good on offense as last year. This belief is obviously fueled by the loss of Harrison, the depth on the O-Line, and Brink’s HORRIBLE play in key stretches last year.
Well, we’re gonna find out on Saturday about all of those issues and question. Can the O-Line protect Brink? Can Brink hit the intermediate pass to the slot or TE early? Can we hit the short out effectively to move the ball on the first few plays of the game (Vegas has set the line at 1:5 that the first O-play of the game for the Cougs is a quick look-in to the right side)? If we score twice early, we stay in this game. If we don’t, we will be in for a a lllllllllong night.
2) “Its not the blitzing that’s the issue, its whether or not you have the blitzers.”
This quote is well known by WSU diehards over the years and for good reason. After all, if you don’t have the horses, you simply can’t deliver the results.
But, what we learned last year and this offseason is that opponents knew our blitzing schemes to a “T”. In other words, we were fooling NOBODY over the last two years and WSU coaches recognized that they had to implement new wrinkles into the system. Looking at quotes from Tuberville this week, you can see that theme of predictability “they’ve been running the same system for years.”
Obviously, WSU coaches must have something up their sleeves for the game and the season. Perhaps injuries will cramp that plan, but we will find out what kind of adjustments the coaches made defensively in the first 15-20 minutes.
3) Will the real WSU coaching staff please stand up:
The last time this coaching staff had this much time to prepare for a major opponent, we were playing Texas in the Holiday Bowl. We know what happened there.
This is a huge opportunity for the staff to show that all of their work and decisions (e.g. Brink) will pay off. Man, I would love to see Doba carried off on the shoulders of a victorious Cougar squad!
The Result:
The Cougs have the ability to play this game into a shoot-out. They also have the ability to get Auburn on their heels, force them away from their running game into a passing game, and pull off the shocker.
That said, I now believe that the pundits have picked the Cougs low for a reason. And, my sense is that we are going to find out how much this group needs further development on offense, particularly the Offensive Line.
This game is gonna get ugly early after a 10-7 first 12 minutes. Then, the ambush will occcur.
The final: Auburn 41 WSU 13 (two Tds and a missed PAT).
Elsewhere in Crap-10:
UCLA and CAL will show that both CAL schools are over-rated this year:
Tennessee 24 CAL 9
Utah 31 UCLA 24
UW 49 San Jose St. 21
Oregon 41 Stanford 17
USC 34 Arkansas 17
Enjoy the game
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