Washington State Football the Day After: BYU
By Mark Allen
Well, I’m pretty sure most Cougar fans are feeling pretty bad right now. I am myself, But there were a few bright spots out of last night. Tuel looked rusty as he was and took very long to get the football out. You have to give credit when credit is due and I tip my cap to Mendenhall and his staff. They did a marvelous job in preparing for this game, They played the Air-Raid perfectly with 6-7 DB’s and just forced tons of pressure on Tuel. We all thought this would be grinding game and an interesting one. It wasn’t what we all had in mind, the word in Fall camp Leach always was preaching was consistency… consistency! We had no consistency last night.
Last night, when WSU was down and had to face adversity… they just couldn’t respond.
– Here we will talk about some pro’s and con’s from last night’s game.
Pro’s –
– Good protection from the O-line tonight.
As much as some people ripped the O-line, what did they expect? 12 seconds of good blocking? Tom Brady and Peyton Manning get the ball out in 5 seconds or less. Tuel needed to do that but just held on too long.
– Decent at times stopping the Rush
Surprisingly we did decently well vs the Rush, which is a good sign for a first game.
Managed to hold BYU to 123 rushing yards on 41 carries for only 3 yards a carry is very satisfying.
– Taylor Taliulu
He’s a very promising young player and did some nice things for a Freshman.
Con’s –
– Didn’t get the ball out fast enough
– Couldn’t run the ball
AT ALL!
-Secondary was awful.
Everybody was getting juked left and right and looking foolish.
– Turnovers
We had two which didn’t help us at all.
Also, blaming Gabe Marks for not trying to bat it down on the interception isn’t fair. He didn’t have a clue where it was to begin with and wasn’t a smart throw either way.
I definitely am not happy about Tuel’s performance but I am still very positive about this season and this is a good wake up call and the coaches will get them prepared for Eastern. Eastern only beat Idaho 20-3. For next weekend, we’ll be fine and hopefully our defense can force some turnovers but I’m very positive that we’ll win this game. There is no reason to panic. We played a very solid BYU team and just couldn’t execute. But, it’s a good wake up call and gives us an easier opponent in Eastern to rebound and fix the issues that we had.