Happy Monday Cougs, as we roll into another week. The team was back at practice last night, albeit a light one, but there is some QB news to get to. Let’s go…..
So the drama of who will be behind center this week? Yeah, not much drama really. Per Christian Caple, it appears that they will stick with the status quo?
Asked if Halliday will continue to take starter’s reps, Leach gave a quick “Yeah.”
Asked if he thinks Halliday will start again this week, Leach said: “Yes.”
Ok, so it’ll be Connor Halliday again this week. At least from where we sit on Sunday night and on in to Monday morning, Halliday is still the starter. And so begins QB CONTROVERSY 2012!
Seriously though, there are some decent arguments that can be made on both sides of the fence at this point. Tuel did some good things in his most extensive time since his injury, but he wasn’t perfect and threw a pretty devastating pick. But Halliday had the sophomore YIPS, as the Beaver D brought the heat up front and had excellent coverage across the field.
What would I do? I guess it doesn’t matter, but I will weigh in – I look at it as we are a 2-4 football team right now and the hopes for postseason play hang by a thread. The defense has improved immensely since the 2nd quarter of the Oregon game, and they are playing with a whole new level of aggression and confidence. But Halliday has now logged 9 INT’s on the season, and well, it ain’t gonna get any easier going forward! Now that we are in to the meat of the Pac-12 season, we are going to see a lot of defensive approaches like we saw with Oregon and Oregon State, where teams will be able to consistently bring three pass rushers and drop eight into coverage, and they are all Pac-12 athletes. So with the defense playing well and an offensive line that struggles blocking three on passing plays, I think you have to seriously consider going with the senior QB who will make less mistakes vs. the so-called “gunslinger”. So if I had a vote, at least right now I would roll with Jeff Tuel and see what happens. But that’s just me. It’s not that it is pulling the plug on Halliday, or that he isn’t THE GUY or whatever going forward. But maybe having Halliday take a seat after a few starts would do him some good, to watch things from the sidelines for a game or two and see what’s going on? And maybe Tuel could calm things down a bit? I don’t know, I guess we’ll see what happens. Cal is playing a hell of a lot better after their early season malaise, hanging tough out at Columbus a few weeks ago and then just drilling UCLA on Saturday and harassing the young QB in Brett Hundley into FOUR INT’s!?! Yeesh.
Moving on, we weighed in with the blog ballot for this week:
WSU Football Blog Ballot – Week 6
| Rank | Team | Delta |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Alabama Crimson Tide | — |
| 2 | Oregon Ducks | — |
| 3 | Florida Gators |  6 |
| 4 | West Virginia Mountaineers | 2 |
| 5 | South Carolina Gamecocks | 2 |
| 6 | Kansas St. Wildcats | 2 |
| 7 | Notre Dame Fighting Irish | 3 |
| 8 | Ohio St. Buckeyes | 4 |
| 9 | Oregon St. Beavers | 5 |
| 10 | LSU Tigers |  -7 |
| 11 | USC Trojans | 2 |
| 12 | Oklahoma Sooners | 6 |
| 13 | Florida St. Seminoles | -9 |
| 14 | Georgia Bulldogs | -9 |
| 15 | Texas Longhorns | -4 |
| 16 | Stanford Cardinal | 1 |
| 17 | Clemson Tigers | -1 |
| 18 | Mississippi St. Bulldogs | 2 |
| 19 | Louisville Cardinals | — |
| 20 | Rutgers Scarlet Knights | 5 |
| 21 | Cincinnati Bearcats | — |
| 22 | Louisiana Tech Bulldogs | — |
| 23 | Texas A&M Aggies | — |
| 24 | Boise St. Broncos | — |
| 25 | TCU Horned Frogs | -10 |
| Dropouts: Nebraska Cornhuskers, Northwestern Wildcats, UCLA Bruins, Texas Tech Red Raiders | ||
SB Nation BlogPoll College Football Top 25 Rankings »
Quick thoughts – Oregon still looks like a strong #2 with their blowout win over the Dawgs. Watch out for West Virginia though, wow, a ho-hum 48 points in the road win at Texas? Some tough games ahead, including K-State and Oklahoma, so we’ll see what they’re made of. But they are a hell of a lot of fun to watch (and who knows, with my man-crush on that offense Dana Holgorsen is running where they score points like it’s NCAA Football ’13, and Holgersen rocking the balding comb-it-back style, we may change to WVUFootballBlog.com at some point! And can you imagine what it would be like if Alabama stumbles, and Oregon and West Virginia somehow end up in the national title game!?).
A lot like Mike Leach, only much, much better
It helps of course for WVU to have a ton of 4-star athletes who can fly up and down the field, plus this year’s RGIII in Geno Smith! But you get the idea. Here’s hoping they both win out and face off, where it will be the first to 100 wins.
Finally, podcast time. We went WAY long last night, like over an hour long. So if you have nothing going on and feel like hearing our rants, check it out here:
Note – if you can’t get the embedded player to play in your browser, you can check it out here at the blogtalkradio.com site. And if you want to join in on the fun next Sunday night? Give us a call! We are happy to talk to you if you want to contribute, so call 347-215-8954 around 8 PM PST and see where things go.
All for now. Enjoy your back-to-whatever Monday, and of course, GO COUGS!
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