Washington State Football: Top 10 Cougs On NCAA 14 Leaves Room for Debate

Aug 30, 2012; Provo, UT, USA; Washington State Cougars kicker Andrew Furney (49) lines up for a field goal as quarterback David Gilbertson (4) prepares to hold during the second quarter against the Brigham Young Cougars at Lavell Edwards Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Jake Roth-USA TODAY Sports

Slow time during the offseason means we have to search for interesting information around the net for debate or topic discussion. Today we have an interesting debate on the top 10 Cougs going into 2013, brought to us from an E3 video on the top 10 players for each team. Cougfan is doing a series on their list of top 10 Cougs, which had much fan input to help, but this doesn’t have anything to do with that really (although we’ll give their list to this point in a minute).

Here’s the top 10 list in full from NCAA 14, along with a note or two:

• 1: K #49 (Andrew Furney) – Solid player, probably a top 3 kicker in the conference. Rated 92
• 2: QB #12 (Connor Halliday) – Not a shoe-in for a lot of Coug faithful right now, but in my opinion you can mark him in already as your day one starter at Auburn. Rated 85
• 3: WR #80 (Dominique Williams) – Came on late in the season and dominated the Apple Cup. Easy to see why he’s rated decently highly on the list. Rated 85
• 4: SS #20 (Deone Bucannon) – To me, Deone is the best player on this football team so this is a huge miss. Has to do with his experience and play-making ability more than anything, but also extremely athletic. Probably a top 3 Pac-12 safety and should be rated around  a 90. Rated 84
• 5: CB #4 (Anthony Carpenter) – Really EA? Did you watch our secondary last season? Outside Deone, nobody deserves a top 10 spot! In fact if 2 of our top 5 is in the secondary, I’ll eat my sock. Rated 82
• 6: HB #34 (Teondray Caldwell) – I going to go with a twitter #Facepalm. You all know why. Rated 82
• 7: WR #7 (Vince Mayle?) – One can only assume they meant Mayle with #7, right? There’s no #7 on the Spring roster and Mayle is the only receiver coming in that has a significant shot at immediate playing time. Only problem is they rate him with 54 strength, which if you see his vitals, is ludicrous. Rated 82
• 8: WR #19 (Brett Bartolone) – With Rickey Galvin’s return to action, Bartolone will have to step up to make the top 10. Rated 82
• 9: RT #77 (John Fullington) – Could really use Fullington here because of experience. Not sure if he’ll step it up enough to earn that playing time though. Hope he does. Rated 82
• 10: DT #98 (Kalifitoni Pole) – Someone saw the overtime of the Apple Cup. Not a bad candidate for a top 10 player but doubtful he makes it above some of the others. Rated 81

Well holy crap, I have an issue with this top 10, I think a lot of the faithful would. Carpenter is not only not a top 5 player overall, he’s barely a top 5 on the defensive side alone if he earns a spot and by no way is guaranteed a starting secondary spot! A resurgence of Damante Horton and/or a big leap by freshmen Rahmel Dockery or Daquawn Brown over the Fall could leave Carpenter in the backup role.

Left off the list that have a shot at my top 10 are Darryl Monroe, Xavier Cooper, Kristoff Williams and Justin Sagote. There’s no way Caldwell makes a Cougar top 10 in any fashion (yeah by the way EA WSU had the worst rushing attack in the country last season), and Mayle is unproven so it is tough to say where he’ll come in at.

For some sort of comparison, here is the 6-10 list of top 10 Cougs from Cougfan.com (all they’ve finished to this point):

• 10: Dominique Williams
• 9:  Andrew Furney
• 8: Elliot Bosch
• 7: Brett Bartolone
• 6: Xavier Cooper

Go Cougs!