Sadly, reality must be finally hitting Cougar nation square in the face after an ugly 45-24 loss on the road at Boise State. Left out in the cold regarding realignment and any post season conference championship, the only remote possibility for Washington State to have been considered in the new 12 team college football playoff would have been to win every single game. Losing to the only ranked team that they will face this year completely dooms their chances until they reconstruct the PAC-12 prior to the 2026-27 academic year.
That said, one of the things that’s bugging me about the Cougars who have a QB that’s one spot shy of being in the Top-10 nationally and an offense that is averaging 40+ points a game, is how bad their defense is when their head coach, Jake Dickert, was the Cougar defensive coordinator before he took over as interim head coach in 2021 after Rolovich was fired. And then, in a moment of euphoria, after Washington State blew-out the Huskies 40-13 in the Apple Cup that year, the team’s first win since 2012, he was immediately elevated one day later to the head coaching position. Given that 67% of his players on defense have less than two years experience playing football at the college level, I’m going to just give him the benefit of the doubt for a while even though they’ve given up an average of 48.5 points their last two games and apparently need a crash refresher course in tackling, currently in the bottom 10 with their red-shirt Sophomore Linebacker Buddha Al-Ugdah tied for worst in the nation.
The Bronco’s scored first and other than a couple of ties at 7-7 and 10-10 early in the game, they led the rest of the way and held the Cougars to just three points in quarters 2 and 3 to be up 24-10 going into the fourth quarter. Washington State got within a possession, 24-17, early in the final period on a John Mateer 33 yard TD pass to Senior WR Kyle Williams. But Boise State would score on back-to-back-to-back TD’s to go up 45-17 with less than five minutes left in the game. Freshman RB Leo Pulalasi would run one in for the Cougars in the last minute of the game, but even with that the 45-24 score was still less than respectable.
Washington State would record zero sacks and just 2 tackles for loss as the nation’s leading running back, Junior Ashton Jeanty, would run rampant through the Cougar defense while rushing 26 times for an incredible 250 yards of the team’s 276 total and all four of their TD’s on the ground. Boise State’s Sophomore QB Maddux Madsen would add two more TD’s while connecting on 12-of-21 for 184 yards. For Washington State and in spite of 8 sacks and 11 tackles for loss by the Bronco’s, the Cougar’s talented Sophomore QB John Mateer still found a way to connect 70% of the time for 327 yards, 2 TD’s and 1 interception. On the ground Washington State was held to just over 2 yards a carry while rushing 39 times for less than 100 yards.
In the AP Recap for ESPN both head coaches raved about Jeanty with Dickert commenting in general saying; “We just got beat in all three phases, and pretty decisively. Jeanty was incredible. Ten yards a carry. Obviously you’ve got to hold him to less than that if you want to win the football game.” Regarding his uber-talented RB, Boise State head coach Spencer Danielson said; “He was relentless. Talk about a guy who puts his team on his back, loves this team, and will find a way to score because that’s what the team needs — that’s Ashton. When your best players are your hardest workers, you’ve always got a shot.” The Cougars have a bye week to get the bad taste of this one out their mouths as well as hopefully work on their tackling before hitting the road to Fresno State on October 12th.