Hooray for the WIN!
Happy Sunday Cougs, as we all bask in the glow of another Coug victory in 2013. Yeah, it's early and we're just 3 games into the season, but as Bud Withers pointed out in this morning's Times article? That win vs. USC kind of changed things a bit. There is a different "feel", if you will, in and around the team and you could see it on display yesterday.
Let me back up just a little bit though, in that this post is titled "Post-run thoughts on a Sunday". Last year I kinda/sorta tried to do this, where I would hit the road for a morning run on Sunday and sort things out in my head a bit after a Cougar football Saturday, and then kind of regurgitate some of those thoughts via a blog post. Not the real down-n-dirty thoughts that we all have at various times during a run/jog/whatever (….and those of you who run? You know EXACTLY what I'm talking about, for we all have a dark side?).
ANYWAY, like the WSU football team this year things have changed for me as well. A year or so ago I was really into running longer distances, culminating in the Seattle Half-Marathon in November. But I was pretty broken down after that experience, sore and tired all the time. Something seemed off, and it took me a couple of months to fully recover, but also realize that I HAVE BEEN DOING IT WRONG all this time! No more "jog", and now it's more "run" than anything else.
But I'm WAY off track here. I think later this year I'll do a post about how things have changed for the better for yours truly, in terms of nutrition and workouts. But for now, let's talk about yesterday's big home W and what it might mean as we roll forward?…
So after my morning run, I went back to the old DVR and re-watched the game while fast-forwarding through the downtime. Here's just a few things that seemed to stand out, at least from watching it again:
1) CLEAN POCKET – Amazing how things can look different from week to week. But there is very little doubt that the offensive line did an excellent job in pass blocking yesterday. The only time Halliday really got hit was when he was rolling out and making a throw out on the edge, and he got whacked pretty good. But Halliday himself said after the game that the O-line was outstanding in their protections and he not only wasn't sacked, but he only really got hit one time. You keep your QB upright and give him time to throw, well, things can look a heck of a lot better as time goes on.
I listened to the post-game show last night, and that was one of the things ol' Vince Grippi noted from looking at this team in person for the first time vs. what he saw a year ago. They are much improved along the O-line, and that seemed to really show itself yesterday.
And those of you whining about a running game, or lack thereof? Get over it. When the passing game works as well as it did yesterday, and the opponent is constantly bringing extra defenders around the line of scrimmage to slow down the run, well, you throw the ball and take advantage of what's given to you. So they didn't blow them off the line yesterday and the three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust routine wasn't happening, SO WHAT? You need to get over yourself and realize that isn't who Mike Leach is and it certainly isn't who he is going to become. He is going to put them in position to make plays revolving around the passing game, period. The running game will always be window dressing in an offense like this, nothing more, nothing less, and at it's very best it will still be an effective counter/jab to what they really want to do, and that's pummel you through the air.
2) HALLIDAY WAS SMART, EFFICIENT, EFFECTIVE AND CONFIDENT – Hard to argue against the numbers, and the 32-for-41 for 380+ and 5 TD's is fantastic against air, let alone human beings. The one INT was obviously a miscommunication with Isiah Myers, as the QB saw post and the receiver broke it off as a little curl, but it still counted as a red zone turnover. Still though, it's very difficult to fault anything he did yesterday and not sound like one big, fat NITPICKER, know what I mean?
The deep throws were a thing of beauty too. Both TD's to Dominique Williams were not only lovely, but the end zone fades in the red zone were just perfectly placed as well. The thing I loved about both of Williams' TD catches on the vertical routes were not only Williams beating the man coverage, and not just the great throws that Halliday made? But they were the RIGHT decisions. Both times, you could see that Southern Utah was quite content to play with just one safety deep down the middle of the field. Halliday recognized that he had one on one on the outside, and it was unlikely the safety would be able to cover enough ground to get out there and help on the deep vertical go route. Sure enough, both plays worked but they were wonderful to see because 1) they were the right decisions, and 2) we haven't seen much deep down the field this year! Both Auburn and USC showed a lot of cover two with both safeties taking half the field, and more or less kept the game in front of them. Why Southern Utah decided to gamble like that by essentially putting 8 in the box against a team WSU that has struggled to consistently run the ball, well, who knows. But it sure looked great on TV on those deep balls!
There was one other throw that really caught my attention though, and it was a play that won't go down as anything gigantic in the box score. It was in the third quarter, and it was the play right after the fumble along the sideline was reversed as the receiver stepped out of bounds. On the next play, Halliday threw it on the far hash mark on his own 39-yard line, and whipped it all the way across the field where Bobby Ratliff caught the ball along the opposite sideline at SO Utah's 39-yard line.
The play-by-play, it just looked like this:
Halliday pass completion to the left to Ratliff for 19 yards to the SoUt34.
But in reality it was a much tougher throw than it sounds. Not only did Halliday have to get enough on the throw to get it all the way across the field with enough velocity so that it wouldn't be picked off or knocked down, but he also had to throw it with some touch. The Southern Utah safety was in the way on the throw, so Halliday had to make sure he not only had the juice on the ball to get it there, but also enough trajectory to get it over the top of the safety in coverage. Not only was the read perfect by recognizing Ratliff getting open out of the slot towards the sideline, but the throw was PERFECT. It could have hit Ratliff right in the face mask, it was that accurate over a long distance and all Ratliff had to do was get his hands up where he could catch the ball.
Those are the kinds of throws that make you realize how gifted Halliday is, and what he can be in this offense. One of the things I recall Drew Bledsoe saying on ESPN radio last year about why he liked the Mike Leach offense so much was that he makes you defend the entire field. You can't just gear up to stop one person or one specific set of plays or even specific areas on the field in this WSU offense, you have to account for everyone, everywhere they go. Throws like that illustrate why people like Leach are high on Halliday, for his natural abilities makes you as a defense defend the whole field!
3) SECOND HALF D STARTING TO BE A "THING"? So for the third straight game, WSU did not allow a 2nd-half TD. In fact, WSU has now allowed just 6 total points in the second half through three full games (2 FG's at Auburn, and no points vs. SC and So Utah). I thought they did do a better job of getting pressure on the QB in the second half too, and once So Utah fell behind and the running game wasn't going to be a factor on that side of the ball it was easier for the D to pin their ears back and fly around a little more freely up front.
Who knows why this is happening, if it is just a coincidence or speaks to the level of QB play they have seen so far, or a massive amount of defensive adjustments in the second half, but all I know is whatever they are doing on D later on in games, it's working.
4) OH THOSE FCS TEAMS! I found it kind of amusing in how some people were bitching about the WSU defense in the first half, as Southern Utah managed to score 10 points and not get completely embarrassed every time they had the football. I think that's just a natural trap to fall into though, in that it is just so damn easy to underestimate teams based on their level of play. We see it every year, and there are decent teams that not only get in real dog fights with schools like this but actually, you know, LOSE? The list is too long to spell out here, but you know how it is. Heck, Akron damn near beat #11 Michigan yesterday after having 1st-and-goal at the 2 with under 30 seconds left! Who was actually happy about that in Ann Arbor, where they are borderline-INSANE about their Wolverines?
But the trap though is something that I'll never forget Bill Doba talking about back in the day. It was after WSU trounced Grambling in the annual Seattle game, 48-7, in 2005. On Doba's radio show after the game, he talked about some of the fans who were complaining as to why they didn't win by a bigger margin, that it was "only" 48-7 against a lower level opponent like Grambling. Doba said something about how the expectations against opponents like that are just automatically ramped up, simply because they aren't at the same level as yourself. But that doesn't mean they can't hang with BCS bad boys. He said "Fans expect to see you complete every pass, convert every third down, score every time you have the football, and force a three-and-out every time on defense. But that just isn't realistic." So while it was easy to bitch on Twitter every time a pass went incomplete, or Southern Utah got a first down or whatever, but at this stage of the program's growth, A WIN IS A WIN IS A WIN. And all I know is it was 48-10, and I will take it.
It would have been easy to be unbelievably flat yesterday. After the monster upset at SC, and a week of hearing how good you are and how you are just going to show up and dominate an FCS foe, it could have been scary. But even though So Utah hung in there for almost a full half, you never really got the feeling that they were in trouble, you know what I mean? They played hard and fast, and at the end of the day they did exactly what they were supposed to do and that was dominate a weaker team. So there.
Finally, to those cocky Huskies, I give you this:
BRILLIANT!
All for now. Enjoy the rest of the weekend and of course, GO COUGS!
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