New Mexico State at Washington State
Over the last four years Washington State has finished no lower than 3rd in the tough PAC-12 North, finishing 2nd in 2016 and 1st last year with an overall record of 11-2 and 7-2 in conference. In spite of that and the fact that the AP Poll had Washington State two spots ahead of Stanford, this year’s media poll has the Cougars coming in 4th in the North-huh? In some corners Mike Leach is like Rodney Dangerfield, he just gets no respect. I doubt New Mexico State feels that way after their road trip to Pullman this past Saturday where they were dismantled by Leach and company.
I get how some folks thought there would be a drop because the Cougar’s Senior QB last year, Gardner Minshew, was a perfect fit for the Air Raid offense-lighting it up all year long throwing for 4,479 yards and 38 TD’s against only 9 interceptions. That’s 400 more yards than Kyler Murray (last year’s Heisman Trophy winner and this year’s starting QB for the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals) threw for Oklahoma last year and 800+ yards more than one of this year’s top two Heisman contenders, Tua Tagovailoa, threw for Alabama. As a matter of fact last year SBNation wrote that; “College football has never had a better quarterback duo in one season than Tagovailoa and Heisman winner Kyler Murray.” No mention of Minshew in that article but he did make it into the NFL, drafted in the sixth round 178th overall by the Jacksonville Jaguars. Reminds me of another guy that was pretty much overlooked who was drafted in the sixth round, 199th overall, by the New England Patriots—Tom Brady. But I digress.
As far as the Cougar head coach goes, I think more P. T. Barnum than Dangerfield because these Washington State Cougars are just flat out fun and entertaining to watch. But in the razzle dazzle smoke and mirrors world that is Mike Leach’s Air Raid Offense the system itself is more important than the individual pieces-a key element which the talking heads and nay sayers always seem to overlook. The coach knows what he’s doing-just look at the results. As far as this year’s squad goes, Leach had some great pieces coming back including three NFL prospect type receivers in Davontavean Martin, Dezman Patton and Eason Winston who collectively accounted for 2,000 yards last year. In addition, he had four starters returning to an offensive line that allowed only 13 sacks all season, a RB in Max Borghi was ran for 8 TD’s, and two-thirds of their starting tacklers back from a unit that led the PAC-12 in sacks. Well, that’s great, but what about Minshew’s replacement Anthony Gordon?
As far as Game 1 went, the new Washington State QB seemed to fit into the system exceedingly well in his first start against New Mexico State. Beating out Gage Gubrud, another Eastern Washington transfer like Minshew, during Fall Camp for the starting job Gordon threw for over 300 yards and 4 TD’s in just the first half alone, leading the Cougars to an easy 58-7 victory over New Mexico State. He finished up going 29 of 35 (an 80% completion rate!) for 420 yards and 5 TD’s and he didn’t even play the whole game, leaving late in the 3rd Qtr to Gage Gubrud, the guy he beat out, who also threw a TD and was equally as efficient completing 9 of 11 passes for 76 yards. The only scoring on the Aggies side happened when QB Josh Adkins scored on a 3-yard TD run in the first quarter after recovering a fumble.
The Cougars almost doubled the total offense of their opponents, 618 yards to 317 yards, with the Washington State QB’s connecting with seven different receivers, all for at least 40 yards. Both sides rushed for right around 100 total yards with Max Borghi getting all the positive yards for the Cougars going 128 yards on 10 carries and 1 TD. New Mexico State didn’t help themselves with 3 fumbles and 2 interceptions while on the Washington State side they were clean as a whistle with no interceptions or fumbles and perfect in the kicking game connecting on all 3 field goals and all 7 extra points. The Cougars have two more non-conference games against N. Colorado and Houston before they open up conference play at home, hosting UCLA on September 21st.
Eastern Washington at Washington
Another coach in the state of Washington besides Mike Leach who had to be pretty ecstatic about the play of his starting QB was Chris Peterson. Under center this year for UW is Georgia transfer Jacob Eason who started for the Bulldogs in 2016 but got injured the first game of 2017, the year Georgia went all the way to the national title game. After getting hurt and replaced, Eason decided to transfer to UW, less than 45 minutes away from Lake Stevens, WA where he grew up. He had to sit out a year waiting to play but after watching him in action on Saturday, it was worth the wait. Eason is much taller at 6’ 6” with a much stronger arm than the Huskies QB for the last four years, Jake Browning, and it was clear in their game against Eastern Washington that the Huskies will be taking advantage of that. Eason connected on 27 of 36 (75%) for 1 tick shy of 350 yards, 4 TD’s, zero interceptions with four receptions going 20 yards or more including a 50 yard strike for TD to Andre Baccellia, and a 7-yard score to Fuller who made a highlight reel one-handed catch while keeping one foot in bounds.
Maybe Eason’s best throw of the night in Washington’s 47-14 win over the Eagles was the one nobody caught, an incompletion that traveled almost 70 yards in the air and according to ESPN’s report, “left the home crowd buzzing.” Aaron Fuller, the intended receiver on the play had this to say about the throw; “I swear to you it came from heaven. All I saw was it went into the clouds and then it came down and I was just like wow.” The Huskies also put together a solid running game rushing 43 times for 200 yards on the ground with 91 of those yards picked up on 12 carries by Freshman Richard Newton including a 23 yard run for TD on Washington’s first possession of the game, an 8 play 55 yard drive. RB’s Salvon Ahmed and Malik Braxton also contributed over 40 yards a piece with Ahmed making it into the end zone as well.
One striking area of improvement for the Huskies on Saturday was their performance in the red-zone in which they ranked in the bottom 20% nationally last year. They scored five TD’s in six opportunities with their 3rd string backup QB Jacob Sirmon taking a knee to end the game on the sixth trip. If you’re thinking that’s not meaningful because they were playing an FCS opponent, Eastern Washington has won their conference six out of the last 10 years and played for the FCS National Championship last January. Just saying.
After loosing so many starters on Defense from last year, nine total, including six of twelve overall that have been drafted by the NFL over the last three years one has to wonder how does Washington keep retooling their defense-leading the PAC-12 every year over the same period. The answer everyone will give you is, “Jimmy Lake.” Since Lake took over as Defensive Coordinator in the 2016-2017 season the Huskies have been tops in the PAC-12 in Total Defense and no lower than 12th in Total Defense nationally. In this game they forced six punts, allowing the Eagles into the red zone on just three occasions, one of which led to a safety with less than three minutes remaining in the game by one of Washington’s eleven freshman playing college football for the very first time, OL Laiatu Latu. They held Eastern Washington to less than 300 total yards of offense and just slightly over 2 yards per carry on the ground, as well as tallying four sacks and nine tackles for loss.
The Huskies will be at home in Alaska Airlines Husky Stadium the next two Saturdays hosting Cal on September 7th and Hawaii on the 14th before they hit the road to LaVell Edwards Stadium in Provo, Utah against BYU.
Oregon at Auburn
We all knew that a win by Oregon over Auburn would have been a big boost for the conference and this past Saturday the Quack definitely looked back as they had those Tigers by the tail until the very end, going toe-to-toe with arguably some of the best defensive linemen in the country and leading 21-20 with less than a minute left. But, after converting on 4th down to the Oregon 26 yard line Auburn QB Bo Nix threw a TD pass into the end zone to Seth Williams with just 9 seconds remaining in a come back rally and 27-21 win for the Tigers, dealing a devastating loss to the Ducks and the PAC-12.
In the passing game Oregon’s Justin Herbert connected on 28 of 37 for almost 250 yards, 1 TD, and no interceptions compared to Nix who completed just slightly over 40% of his throws for 177 yards and 2 TD’s. The Tiger’s ground game was 100+ yards better than Oregon, 206-90, but the Duck’s had two rushing TD’s to their one. Auburn had 60 more yards of total offense and 2 more sacks than the Ducks but Oregon had 2 interceptions to none for the Tigers. Auburn had to play catch-up the entire game and Oregon had them on the ropes for most of it, ahead at the end of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and all of the 4th—they were ahead the entire game until the last 9 seconds.
If the Ducks were to win out from here, will that be a good enough loss by the end of the season to get them into the final four? It might be, but in addition to winning out a lot depends on what Auburn does the rest of the season. After all, the Tiger’s were picked to come in 4th in the SEC West this year. If that’s where they land, this loss does nothing more than puts another nail in the coffin for a PAC-12 Conference who according to Matt Calkins, Seattle Times Sport’s Columnist is, “a beta league in the alpha-stacked Power 5.” He points to the 4-12 record over the last two bowl seasons as well as the PAC-12 Conference’s inability to recruit high quality players with only one Top 10 Class since 2012 as his rationale for that conclusion, well those things plus the national championship thing-but we won’t go there. But as far as he’s concerned, “the PAC-12 just hasn’t won the games it has needed to. It has earned its reputation, and will have to earn its way out of it.”
For now anyway, Auburn has moved up 6 spots to No. 10 on the AP Poll while Oregon has moved down 5 to No. 16. The Ducks come back home to take on Nevada this Saturday at 4:30pm on the PAC12 Network and then Montana the next week before hitting the road for another major test, but this time against PAC-12 North Conference rival Stanford on September 21st.
UC Davis at Cal
Cal had a lot to look forward to this year with a returning Sophomore QB in Chase Garbers, possibly the best defense in the conference including Inside Linebacker Evan Weaver who had 159 tackles last season, and a secondary that accounted for 21 interceptions in 2018-2nd best in the nation. What they didn’t know was whether or not RB Christopher Brown Jr. was going to be able to start after injuring his ankle in the final week of spring practice. Well, in their home opener against UC Davis that question was answered as Brown rushed for 197 of Cal’s 233 yards in a 27-13 win against UC Davis. In addition to the yards, with the game tied Brown scored a go-ahead TD with 3 minutes left in the 3rd for Cal to go up 20-13 with Chase Garbers throwing a TD at the beginning of the 4th Qtr to go up 27-13 which turned out to be the final score.
For Cal, the game was pretty sloppy. Garbers threw two interceptions and the Bears fumbled four times, only recovering one of those. They trailed most of the first half, finally tying the score at 10 a piece with 7 minutes left in the half and kicking a field goal with less than a minute left to go up at the half 13-10. UC Davis tied the score on their first possession of the 2nd half and it took Cal most all of the 3rd Qtr to finally get the lead back.
As Cal Head Coach Justin Wilcox said; “We weren’t in sync but it wasn’t panic, we battled back and got into some rhythm on both sides of the ball. We just made it really difficult on ourselves at times.” One of those times was the opening kickoff in which a fumble by Ashtyn Davis set up a short TD run by UC Davis and an early 7-0 lead which expanded to 10-0 on a field goal after three possessions by Cal that either ended in punts or an interception. As a matter of fact according to ESPN, “their first four drives ended in two punts, an interception and a fumble.”
Cal has a lot to do this week in preparation to face a really good Husky Team next Saturday on the road and as Cal Linebacker Evan Weaver said in regard to their effort against UC Davis and looking forward toward the game with Washington; “As a defense we played horrible. We’re not ready, but we will be ready next Saturday. You can believe that. Right now it’s not looking good. But we’ll get it right. Then we’ll fly up there and we’ll beat them.” Well, I appreciate his candor regarding their play against Davis and if you don’t go into any contest without the belief you can win you might as well not show up. But in reality, the thought of Cal beating the Husky team I saw play this past weekend is nothing more than wishful thinking. That on top of the fact that Cal upset Washington last year makes me think the Huskies will be looking to make a statement.
It will be a homecoming in more than one regard for Cal Head Coach Justin Wilcox. After being a linebacker’s coach at Cal under former head coach Jeff Tedford, Wilcox left to become Defensive Coordinator for Boise State in 2006, Chris Peterson’s first year as head coach. In those four years his defenses were among the highest rated in the nation for a team that only lost four games over that period of time. But he not only has links to Peterson he was the Defensive Coordinator for Washington under Steve Sarkisian in 2012 and 2013.
As far Cal’s schedule goes, it really tough. After their road trip to Washington, two weeks later they travel to Ole Miss and then come back home the next week to face a good Arizona State team at home and then Oregon on the road.
Northwestern at Stanford
K. J. Costello was very efficient for the Cardinal completing 80% of his passes, going 16 of 20 for 152 yards, 1 TD, and no picks. Just think what he might have ended up with if he had been able to play the second half. After all the team was looking so Stanford like, especially on their 16 play, 90 yard drive that ate up well over 8 minutes on the clock ending with Costello’s lone TD to Michael Wilson with just 3:12 left to play in the 2nd Qtr. But with just 2 seconds left in the first half Costello was hit by Northwestern’s Earnest Brown IV with a forearm to the facemask as he was sliding to the ground. On replay it looked like it could have been intentional but Brown was not ejected for targeting, being called for a late hit instead, which set up a long 51 yard field goal attempt for Stanford that Jet Toner converted to make it 10-0 going into the half.
With Costello out for the 2nd half Stanford relied on what we have come accustom to seeing them rely on for years, good defense (allowing just slightly over 200 yards in total offense) and a deliberate running game that moves the chains and takes time off the clock. In spite of all that Stanford did not put any more points on the board going Fumble, Punt, Missed Field Goal and Punt in their first four possessions of the 2nd half. Northwestern was equally as inept going Fumble, Missed Field Goal, Interception, and Punt before finally capitalizing with a score set up by a Stanford fumble late in the 4th Qtr. Only up by three, 10-7, the game wasn’t a done deal until Casey Toohill strip sacked Northwestern’s QB Hunter Johnson leading to a fumble recovery and TD in the end zone by Senior Linebacker Jordan Fox with 20 seconds left.
In spite of the Stanford starting QB only playing one half of the game, the Cardinal still threw for 100+ yards more than Northwestern, 233 yards to 117. They were also better on the ground picking up 132 yards to 93 with most of those accounted for by Stanford Senior RB Cameron Scarlett. Both teams fumbled three times and lost the ball twice with the Cardinal Defense being a bit more disruptive picking up three sacks and 5 tackles for loss.
If K. J. Costello ends up out for Stanford’s road trip to the Los Angeles Coliseum this Saturday to play USC, it might be a chance for Clay Helton and the Trojans to dodge another bullet.
Oklahoma State at Oregon State
On August 13th Athlon Sports published this year’s version of, “College Football’s Top 30 Offensive Lines for 2019.” Not listed of course was Oregon State, however their opponent in Week 1, Oklahoma State, was. As Athlon writes, “While the linemen in the trenches don’t get enough credit, they are often the most important piece to a successful offense. Flashy skill talent and quarterbacks take home all of the accolades and headlines, but neither position can thrive without a solid offensive line [which one obtains through] elite recruiting and talent development.” Athlon takes into account, “depth, overall talent, production, level of competition and projected output,” for their year-to-year evaluation. When they evaluate talent they are also talking size as this year’s projected No. 1 Offensive Line is Georgia which averages 330 lbs per player on the line.
Size certainly had a hand in the 555 yards of Total Offense gained by Oklahoma State in their 52-36 win against the Beavers at home in Corvallis, especially the 352 yards on the ground and 4 rushing TD’s, an average close to 7 yards per carry. Sophomore RB Chuba Hubbard was a one man wrecking crew for the Cowboys averaging 8.5 yards per touch while carrying the ball 26 times for 221 yards and 3 rushing TD’s. As I mentioned in the preview of the Oregon State Defense which Bill Connelly at SBNation referred to as, “a master work in awfulness,” they are small certainly when compared to a team like Oklahoma State but also in comparison to their PAC-12 competition like UCLA-about 20 to 30 pounds lighter. Oregon State’s Head Coach Jonathan Smith is aware of the issue and has been picking up bigger guys but as far as recruiting goes in general, the Beavers were 11th out of 12th in the PAC-12 recruiting race prior to his arrival and were dead last in 2018, his first year.
On the plus side, Oregon State did put up 448 yards of Total Offense with Senior QB Jake Luton completing 23 of 52 for 251 yards, 3 TD’s, and no interceptions. On the ground they rushed 37 times for 167 yards and 1 TD with most of those yards picked up by Sophomore RB Jermar Jefferson and Senior Artavis Pierce. But it just wasn’t nearly enough when compared to Oklahoma State’s 4 rushing TD’s mentioned above in addition to their passing attack handled by Freshman QB Spencer Sanders who was a very efficient 19 of 24 for 203 yards, and 3 more TD’s.
As noted by ESPN, “Oregon State did not hold a conference opponent to fewer than 500 yards last season and gave up an overall average of 45.7 points and 536.8 yards per game — leaving the team ranked 128th in the nation.” We’ll have to see how it pans out, but so far they’re right on track for a repeat performance and will be looking at teams in the PAC-12 that were rated a lot higher on Athlon’s list of top offensive lines than Oklahoma State.
Hopefully a trip to the Aloha state will do the Beavers good as they’ll take on Hawaii this coming Saturday, September 7th and then return home to host Cal Poly before facing Stanford in Corvallis for their start of conference play on Saturday, September 28th.