….or is it??
Happy Sunday Cougs. Your old pal SeanHawk back at it again here, post-Sunday-run style, as we look back to yesterday and (better yet), ahead to what's next.
And let me say that it was good to get out there and run hard in the rain. Not only was it cleansing for the body to sweat off the extra calories and such consumed watching football late yesterday, but after a blowout loss? It's cleansing for the soul, to sort through your thoughts and think about things in your own little world as you prioritize and remember what's important in your life.
Anywho, last night….yeah, that pretty much sucked, didn't it? The young lads hung in there for a half, and did some OK things here and there. But for the most part it was a far-too-familiar feeling as they trudged through the second half and were basically steamrolled once the mistakes and such started to pile up.
Some quick thoughts on last night, plus what's ahead…..
1) Halliday was, well, Halliday – I know I've been big on Halliday this year, and thought quite highly of his performances the prior two games. He put up some nice numbers, threw a pretty deep ball on a few occasions, and generally did what you are supposed to do against the weaker opponents and that's lead your team to a lot of yards and points and all that. But the naysayers warned that while the numbers were nice and he did have some moments, there were also some legit concerns with how he handled pressure and things like that, and that perhaps he would make that one huge gaffe, ala late in the Auburn game where he floated a back-breaking INT in the end zone in a 7-point game. But I guess I chose to be in a happy place instead of being overly critical.
Anyway, we all saw what happened last night. Above everything else that we knew going in to last night, I think the consensus was that Halliday needed to essentially play the perfect game if we were going to hope for the upset, and he was far from that. His accuracy was an issue on several throws, where he was behind on some things or just off in his accuracy or timing. But overall I thought he looked a heck of a lot like the QB who managed the game vs. USC in the second half of that win, in that he generally took what was given to him on the short stuff and did a decent job in taking care of the ball without throwing those pesky "WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?!?!" balls deep down the field.
But, alas, it all fell apart in that one play in the third quarter. Not only did he just air mail the ball into double coverage down the left side, which was easily picked off and run back for 6, but he was absolutely destroyed in the process.
As they said on the radio broadcast as overheard by Jessamyn Mcintyre on the sidelines, Halliday had "no idea what happened" on the play or how Stanford scored. What's weird is that he came back in to the game on the next series, only to have him limp off after a throw on the next possession, simultaneously holding his lower left side as well as heavily favoring one leg over the other. It was hard to really tell what exactly was wrong, other than he pretty much got his ass kicked by the big bad Stanford D?
That said, I don't think I look at last night as a whole and peg Halliday as the biggest problem or biggest issue holding this team back from some sort of greatness rarely seen in Pullman. There were some crucial drops early on that were both inexcusable, and one in particular by Isiah Myers was just painful to watch. On a nice throw on third and long, Halliday basically hit Myers between the numbers on a deep curl-in route that would have moved the chains and kept things going in the right direction, but he just flat-out dropped the ball.
There was another drop as well on third down later on in the first half that again would have kept the drive alive, but again, a crucial drop early in the game when it was still a game.
I am not saying that drops were the reason we got blown out, not even close. But when you are the underdog in a game like that against a legit national title contender in Stanford, you just can't make those kinds of mistakes and hope to hang around for very long. Those kinds of plays are what separate teams that may or may not flirt with bowl eligibility vs. teams who expect to win 11-12 games and play in BCS bowls. The underdog makes those mistakes, the contender simply doesn't.
We'll see what happens with Halliday going forward. Of course, as we know NOBODY gets hurt at WSU (at least nobody talks about getting hurt at WSU). Mike Leach said after the game they expect to have Halliday next week at Cal, but, did anyone who watched the way things went when he was hurt really expect him to be out there in 6 days?? I don't know about you but it at least felt like we may have seen the last of Halliday for a while. While leads me to….
2) Austin Apodaca was, well, Austin Apodaca. Nervous early and for good reason, he seemed a step too late on pretty much everything. But just when you thought they might go with the walk-on QB Falk, or even burn Tyler Bruggman's redshirt, Apodaca scraped himself off the mat and bravely finished the game.
I tip my hat his direction because it sure as hell didn't look like fun getting the crap kicked out of you by that angry Stanford D! But the kid settled down and yeah, it was garbage time and all but he made some decent throws and got them into the end zone a couple of times. That's better than, well, not scoring I guess?
There was one throw that he made that really made me go "hmmmm!", and in a good way. It was on one of those out-and-up wheel routes, where the inside receiver heads towards the sideline and then breaks it off and heads up the field? It's a tough throw as you have to get it in there in a smaller window, out in front of the WR and the corner covering him and hit him in stride, and still have enough heat and touch on the ball to get it in there ahead of the safety help that is likely to flow that direction. But Apodaca threw an absolute STRIKE on that throw, right in the receivers hands about 30 yards up the field….and the pass was dropped. Sigh.
I guess the thing to take from the QB's in this one is that the debate may not be a debate for a while now. If Halliday is as injured as he looked last night, this may be Apodaca's job for the foreseeable future. Ready or not, here we go!
3) Where's the pass rush?? OK, I know Stanford has an unbelievable offensive line. They are deep, deep, deep, and you could probably take their entire second string along the O-line and have them start on virtually any other Pac-12 team in the conference. They are huge, they are strong as can be and they are virtually impossible to blitz against with how smart they are in how they help each other out and communicate on who's supposed to be blocking who.
That said, I was astonished at the lack of pass rush from the Cougs, even when they did decide to blitz an extra guy. The whole week all we heard about was people talking about how WSU needed to put Stanford in 2nd and 3rd and long, like 3rd and 6 or more would be the ideal scenario. But yet even when that actually happened, Kevin Hogan could sit back there and make a flippin' ham sandwich and STILL deliver the ball wherever he wanted!
Who wants a sandwich?? I've got PLENTY of time.
That was one of the things Matt Millen said during the broadcast that I actually agreed with, as he said on the first series of the game that WSU's defensive front is impressive in it's size and strength but the defense absolutely lacks a pass rusher, period. I was hoping Kache Palacio might be that guy after how athletic he looked the last couple of games, but he was absolutely engulfed by Stanford's O line whenever he did try to rush. And there was one blitz he did where he kinda/sorta half jumped up in the air, and Tyler Gaffney the running back for Stanford drove him about 5 yards back and out of the play!
It was awful, and also glaring in seeing how much we just can't get to the QB. I don't know how they are going to do it, but they have to figure out how to get more pressure on the QB or more Pac-12 offenses are going to pick our secondary apart, piece by piece. Imagine what Sean Mannion is going to do to us in a couple of weeks if we can't make him uncomfortable!
I think that's all I have the stomach for right now. Just a terrible night in every way, from injuries (Halliday, Daquawn Brown, Damante Horton??) to getting blown out to horrible weather and lousy attendance with an empty stadium by the end of the 3rd quarter, just a nightmare Saturday.
But that's the beauty in all this – the ability for young kids to bounce back. There is one thing that Colin Cowherd says a lot on his ESPN radio show, and I know 99.99% of you hate his guts for whatever reason, probably because he once on the air called WSU a truck stop with a college or something like that. But he always says that often times in life, 10% of it is what happens to you, and 90% of life is how you REACT to what happens to you. And that's what is going to be so fascinating about next week's game in Berkeley. How do these young kids respond to getting their asses kicked by Stanford? Will they go in to the corner in the fetal position and suck their thumbs, hoping all the bad stuff just magically goes away? Will they revert to the hang-dog-looks from 2012 that were just awful to watch last year, once things start to go back? Or will they get up and fight with the new attitude that we had seen so much of early on in 2013?
There's still a lot of football left in this season. They sit at 3-2, and need to find 3 wins over their last 7 games to get to the postseason. Of course it's possible, but it's clear that it's going to be tough from here on out now that we are entering the meat of the conference schedule. The season is a war of attrition, and depth hasn't been our friend in recent years (obviously). But it's going to be a test of everyone on the roster from here on out and if they have to go to "next man up" when starters start dropping with injuries. We'll see if they are able to get up and keep moving forward, or if we're right back into the hell of 2008-2012.
All for now. Enjoy the rest of your Sunday (and the Seahawks are getting WHOOPED at Houston, what a lousy way to wrap up the weekend!??) Err, yeah, I mean GO SEAHAWKS, WOW!). And of course, GO COUGS!
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