Prior to Mike Leach becoming the head coach of Washington State the Cougars had won a mere 9 games over the course of four seasons, loosing 40. Coming from 10 winning seasons as head coach of the Texas Tech Red Raiders it may have taken Leach about a year longer than expected to turn it completely around, but by Year 4 he had and hasn’t looked back since—winning the PAC-12 North Division in 2018 while leading the nation in passing at 374 yards per game, exactly 10 years after winning the Big-12 South. Mike Leach has been voted PAC-12 Coach of the Year twice, will be working on his fifth consecutive winning season in 2019, and last year became the first coach in WSU history to win eleven games and a final national ranking of 10th in both the Coaches and AP Poll. Leach runs the Air Raid Offense of which he is one of the developers and chief proponents. The system runs from a shotgun spread formation employing one running back and four wide receivers, two outside and two inside, not always evenly split from side-to-side. The ball goes to whoever’s open which often times results in anywhere from 8 to 10 folks having sometimes multiple receptions by the end of the game.
In 2019 Leach dips from the same well-Eastern Washington-in which he found magic with 2018’s QB Gardner Minshew. In Gage Gubrud, he has found himself a rags-to-riches guy who had no Division 1 scholarship offers and eventually joined Eastern Washington as a walk-on. He red-shirted his first year and functioned as a kick holder the second, although he did get one start at QB in a loss to Montana. In 2016 he won the starting QB job and in his first career start, a game that must have stuck in Mike Leach’s mind, he upset Washington State connecting on 34 of 40 for 475 yards and five TD’s in a 45-42 upset.
Washington state has lots of great receiving talent coming back including NFL prospects in Davontavean Martin, Dezman Patton and Eason Winston who collectively accounted for 2,000 yards last year. With four starters returning to an offensive line that allowed only 13 sacks all season, Gubrud should have plenty of time to get the ball out—not that the QB wastes much time in the Air Raid Offense making decisions. Keeping the defense honest and able to pick up respectable yards when they do hit the ground running will be left primarily to Max Borghi who ran for 8 TD’s last year in addition to being a reliable pass catcher. On the defensive side of the ball the Cougars have two-thirds of their starting tacklers back from a unit that led the PAC-12 in sacks as well as holding their opponents to just over 350 yards a game. If there might be serious concerns they probably lie in the secondary.
The Amway Coaches Poll has Washington State at No 21, two spots ahead of Stanford. The Cougars kick off their season at home on Saturday, August 31st against New Mexico State at 7:00pm on the PAC-12 Network. They’ll have two more non-conference games against N. Colorado and Houston before they open up conference play by hosting UCLA on September 21st.