Washington State Football: After Colorado, What Now?

Sept. 22, 2012; Pullman, WA, USA; Washington State Cougars wide receiver Marquess Wilson (86) looks towards the sideline against the Colorado Buffaloes during the first half at Martin Stadium. Mandatory Credit: James Snook-US PRESSWIRE

Dang it… Well we lost, we played with fire and got burned.  Lets talk about the good for a bit though.  We dominated 3 quarters of a game we should have… Again.   Our offense is clicking the way it should, our playmakers are making plays and our defense is getting better at limiting big plays.  I felt like for the first time we had responded to adversity like a decent team.  The problem is a game doesn’t consist of 3 quarters… It’s 4, and until we play all 4 quarters we will continue to lose to anyone who steps on the field.

First things first, Coach Leach made the right call.  Going on 4th down, when your offense has been dominating all game and essentially moving at will is yeah a good call.  I mean yes there’s risk of not making it, and not a lot of people see that as conventional but that’s part of having the coach we scored.  Lets take a deeper look at the specific situation.  We converted on a 4th and 8 earlier in the game, had the right look and threw a bad pass, that’s it, not a bad call, just inexperience at our QB position.  Also we had missed a kick earlier, not to say we shouldn’t have faith in our kicker as he’s doing awesome but he missed… a first down puts that game away just as well as a kick. Leach knows what he’s doing and made a good call and that’s the call we all should expect in the same situation next time, but our playmakers have to make the plays, not our play callers.  By the way it was an excellent play call and we should have had a touchdown, give Connor time in this Offense, he will minimize mistakes and close out games.

Going forward we just have to keep supporting this Coaching staff and these players, our defense right now is very pieced together and that’s what cost us the game on Saturday, not our offense, not our Coaching but our defense.  Everything else is getting there but our defense just continues to hurt and who can blame these kids, it’s all patched together right now and yeah that allows teams to put up points in a hurry.  Don’t lose faith though, I think (minus the breakdown) if we play the way we did in that game for 4 quarters every game (with the exception of two of those games, I think everyone knows what I’m talking about) left on our schedule are winnable games.  Some people wouldn’t agree because of the end result last week but I tend to analyze the entire game and still believe we have the ability to get better and win some more this year.

Time to move forward Cougs and we need to more than ever right now, #2 Oregon is coming and we have to meet them in Seattle?  We need some good things to happen in this game, we need things to take from this game.  We don’t have to pull the biggest upset in Cougar football history but we do need small victories in this game we can take to Corvallis.