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Just a Feeling...

MikeFingLeach

Team Captain
Jul 16, 2012
517
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We've been beaten down and become jaded as a fan base. Losing can do that. We are all humans and get emotional regarding our beloved alma mater.

However, I have a feeling things are going to dramatically shift. You can't keep a good man down and we're due for a positive surprise. Improvement is not linear and Leach has made several positive intangible changes within the program. Is 2015 the year we break through? I'm not sure, but it wouldn't be the first time a Cougar team was expected to bottom feed and made some noise in the Pac.

Just a feeling...flame away.
 
I think you might be right on. You might be wrong! lol.

Here's the thing. This year is going to be average, IMHO. But this year is also fairly pivotal. If we blow a couple games that we should have won (like last year), this fan base is going to start sliding back to that "jaded" stuff you are talking about. The not caring attitude. I've talked to a whole bunch of people that were hoping CML would be able to wiggle his nose and WSU would be relevant again, first year. They now realize that was illogical and unrealistic. But the end of the line is coming. Things need to happen and if we have bad outings like last year, just no heart (Apple Cup) or horribly missed assignments (CAL) or ego that results in just "not showing up" (Nevada)… Rumblings will get pretty loud.

But on the flip side of that coin, if we battle every game, if we don't make stupid, stupid mistakes (hello ST!!!) that cost us games, people will see improvement. They'll remain hopeful.

CML's brand of football is truly fun to watch. So, IMHO, that has held off the townsmen with pitchforks for a little bit. More-so than any "generic" coach, anyways. So I think we can have a 5, maybe 6 win season but it'll be HOW we win or lose that will truly make the difference. There will be blowouts. Stanford, Oregon, USC (don't know the rotation of whom we play this year). But we have to battle through those games, regardless. All other games, we'll see once the season starts. Once they play other teams, we'll see how they are gelling.

But dumb mistakes, missed assignments, those silly things that lost us at least 3 games last year, can't happen this year.

EDIT: But man… hope you are right and I'm wrong about this being an average season.
This post was edited on 4/8 10:39 AM by Coug95man2
 
Originally posted by Coug95man2:

If we blow a couple games that we should have won (like last year), this fan base is going to start sliding back to that "jaded" stuff you are talking about. The not caring attitude.
In order for us to challenge for a bowl game, I think we have to start the season 3-0 vs. Portland State, @ Rutgers, and Wyoming.

I don't think losing a close game at Rutgers will start or fan base sliding back, but losing a home game to Portland State or Wyoming certainly will. The same holds true for all of our home games.

We can't have delusions of grandeur about beating Stanford and ASU at home, but in year 4, shouldn't we (as fans) expect those games to be competitive? Should we expect to beat Colorado and Oregon State at home? I think so.

We have to set a goal for 6-6 this year. I think it's attainable. The 3 out of conference games along with Oregon State and Colorado at home have to be ours. At worst, we must go 4-1 in those games, IMO.
 
Despite being a "beaten down" and a "jaded" fan base, it is still damn difficult to get an RV permit in the Beasley lot. So there is at least a core group that hasn't given up (yet).
 
Tough to say. Raw new starter at QB (yes, I know he's got 3 starts, but he's still just a sophomore). New DC, new D. I won't lament the new CBs and DL too much, because last year's weren't that good anyway. Point is, there are a lot of places where things could go wrong.

Portland State should be (better be) an easy win anyway, and is the week 1 tune-up game that I like to see. Probably improves our shot at winning at Rutgers, and I think we need to. That'll be a confidence game, and I think a win there leads to a win over Wyoming and a 3-0 start. A loss in NJ makes Wyoming a 60/40 proposition.

I think starting 3-0 gives us enough to get 3 wins in conference - Cal on the road, Oregon State and Colorado at home seem most likely - and maybe those (plus the turmoil there) give us enough to get the Apple cup too, and a 7-5 (or better) finish. Oregon and Arizona on the road are tall mountains to climb...Stanford and ASU at home are tough, but I won't rule out either one. And like I've said before, I think UCLA and Mora are due for a mini-meltdown...and we've generally played well in Pasadena (as long as it wasn't on New Year's Day).

A 2-1 start makes us shakier, probably doesn't get us enough confidence to beat Cal on the road, which means we need OSU, CU, and UW plus a surprise just to make 6-6.

This year we miss Utah and USC. Kind of unfortunate we don't play Utah - they'd be at home and they're circling the drain. USC would be on the road, and the Coliseum is a bad place for WSU. Not sure we've ever won 2 in a row there. They've probably got enough latent talent to be decent this year, but I look for Sark to preside over their slow decline.

Awful lot of question marks, but from a distance this year, 8-4 looks like a damn successful season. With a new defense and a sophomore QB, I think that'd be a pretty good year for most any WSU team. Unfortunately, it's also easy to envision another 3-9 year.
 
Originally posted by CougPatrol:
Originally posted by Coug95man2:

If we blow a couple games that we should have won (like last year), this fan base is going to start sliding back to that "jaded" stuff you are talking about. The not caring attitude.
In order for us to challenge for a bowl game, I think we have to start the season 3-0 vs. Portland State, @ Rutgers, and Wyoming.

I don't think losing a close game at Rutgers will start or fan base sliding back, but losing a home game to Portland State or Wyoming certainly will. The same holds true for all of our home games.

We can't have delusions of grandeur about beating Stanford and ASU at home, but in year 4, shouldn't we (as fans) expect those games to be competitive? Should we expect to beat Colorado and Oregon State at home? I think so.

We have to set a goal for 6-6 this year. I think it's attainable. The 3 out of conference games along with Oregon State and Colorado at home have to be ours. At worst, we must go 4-1 in those games, IMO.
Year 4 of what? This isn't a veteran team. This is a mish mash of guys that have transferred in, redshirted or played right away. Who cares if it's year 4 of Leach being on campus? This dumpster fire wrapped in a trailer park picked up by a tornado isn't going to get fixed in 4 years. It's gonna take a lot longer than that. This idea that coaches should come in and in year 4 have things turned around is for blue blooded football programs. WSU was a mess. A new coach brings in his first two classes and guess what? Prob most of those guys either don't make it or get beat out by recruits in year 3 or 4.

In year 4 I expect WSU to move forward a step or two, but to think that there's going to OR should have been drastic improvement by year 4 is ridiculous.

100 years of WSU not giving a shit about the success or failure of its football program isn't gonna be fixed overnight, with brand new facilities or a celebrity football coach having been on campus for 4 years.
 
Originally posted by BiggsCoug:

In year 4 I expect WSU to move forward a step or two, but to think that there's going to OR should have been drastic improvement by year 4 is ridiculous.

100 years of WSU not giving a shit about the success or failure of its football program isn't gonna be fixed overnight, with brand new facilities or a celebrity football coach having been on campus for 4 years.
Completely agree, but is it unrealistic (or unfair) for fans to expect that we'll be competitive at home against the likes of Portland State, Wyoming, Oregon State, Stanford, ASU, and Colorado?

Leach isn't going anywhere unless he wants to, nor is he on the hot seat; but you said it....we have to expect that we'll move forward a step or two. There has to at some point be an expectation that we'll compete with most teams at home.

Setting a goal of 6-6 doesn't seem to be all that lofty.
 
Against PSU, Wyoming, OSU and Colorado? Yes. Against Stanford and ASU? No.

You'd like to think WSU could be 3-0 in non league and come up with 3 league wins. The reality is that there are no easy games for WSU in league play.

6-6 isn't lofty. This is a new era of PAC 12 football though. You could lose all your league games by a touchdown OR win them all by a touchdown. No easy outs.
 
Originally posted by BiggsCoug:
Against PSU, Wyoming, OSU and Colorado? Yes. Against Stanford and ASU? No.

You'd like to think WSU could be 3-0 in non league and come up with 3 league wins. The reality is that there are no easy games for WSU in league play.

6-6 isn't lofty. This is a new era of PAC 12 football though. You could lose all your league games by a touchdown OR win them all by a touchdown. No easy outs.
I'm relatively new to the Pac-8/-10/-12 era. I entered WSU in '92. But as I recall there were only a couple of perennial doormats in my days at WSU, and they rotated. My early years, OSU and OU were the only doormats (for some reason Pettibone and his option O rings a bell). Stanford and CAL had some talent, but weren't knocking on any Rose Bowl doors. Really, when I entered the Pac days, it was all about USC, UW, UCLA, ASU. And AU had some clout, but really only as an upset team.

But I agree with your perspective now. Perhaps it is the scholarship cap (what, the most recent and perhaps most limiting in '92?) coming to roost. Things are _FAR_ more competitive now than they were then. Of course I matured in the early glory days of WSU (Bledsoe's Snow Bowl was my freshman year), but I suffered through the Deeds, Davis, Pattinson, etc days. But even then I can't recall it being as competitive as it is now. Teams rose and fell, but there were the consistent power teams (USC). It seems now, though, that not even USC (and outside the Pac, such as tOSU, Alabama, PSU) are invulnerable anymore.

For my part, I like it. I'm happy to see the OU's, Michicgan's, USC's, Alabama's go down to normal teams. It means teams like WSU can one day aspire to the same heights without overcoming the financial disadvantages. Now we just need to overcome the historical/tradition disadvantages. And we built a lot of tradition "capital" in the 90's and 00's. Let's capitalize on it!
 
If we are going to compare then vs. now, here are a couple of other thoughts.

30-40 years ago, D 1 football had not devolved down to the power 5 conferences. More schools had at least a bit of a shot at getting kids, especially the ones on their back porch. And there were fewer kids. On the other hand, it was pre-internet, and it actually took work to find kids in the first place, at least outside of major media markets. You could find kids that nobody knew about until pretty late in the game. And even known kids fell off the radar if they moved to a rural area (James Darling moving from CA to Kettle Falls is a good example).

One thing that has NOT changed is the need to evaluate talent. IMO that has actually become a bit more difficult, because first of all, there are a lot more kids to evaluate. Second, there are all these internet service talent "gurus" stirring the pot, typically providing opinions that are pretty marginal in terms of long term accuracy. And third, our society today expects instant electronic availability, info turnaround and gratification. Included in that is the expectation that talent can be identified from videos...when most good coaches will tell you that face to face has a lot of benefits, though it isn't practical from a time standpoint.

Something that is clearly more difficult today for a coaching staff is maintaining contact with a recruit. How can I say "more difficult" when contact is so much easier? Because the ease of contact raises the expectation that the staff will be in almost 24/7 contact. A whole lot more effort than was previously required.
 
Originally posted by cr8zyncalif:

If we are going to compare then vs. now, here are a couple of other thoughts.

30-40 years ago, D 1 football had not devolved down to the power 5 conferences. More schools had at least a bit of a shot at getting kids, especially the ones on their back porch. And there were fewer kids. On the other hand, it was pre-internet, and it actually took work to find kids in the first place, at least outside of major media markets. You could find kids that nobody knew about until pretty late in the game. And even known kids fell off the radar if they moved to a rural area (James Darling moving from CA to Kettle Falls is a good example).

One thing that has NOT changed is the need to evaluate talent. IMO that has actually become a bit more difficult, because first of all, there are a lot more kids to evaluate. Second, there are all these internet service talent "gurus" stirring the pot, typically providing opinions that are pretty marginal in terms of long term accuracy. And third, our society today expects instant electronic availability, info turnaround and gratification. Included in that is the expectation that talent can be identified from videos...when most good coaches will tell you that face to face has a lot of benefits, though it isn't practical from a time standpoint.

Something that is clearly more difficult today for a coaching staff is maintaining contact with a recruit. How can I say "more difficult" when contact is so much easier? Because the ease of contact raises the expectation that the staff will be in almost 24/7 contact. A whole lot more effort than was previously required.
Let's not kid ourselves, it starts and ends with talent. Leach has proven to be a good X and O coach, and can win with less talent, but not significantly less talent. No one says this is a talented team. Biggs complained regarding its patchwork, hodge podge nature. The reason we are not going to have a good year is the talent isn't there. The most we can hope for in 2015 is to see a dozen or so kids on the field that show real promise. If we get to 5 or 6 wins with the same level of talent we fielded in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014, that isn't progress (its great coaching), because the root cause of our decade long downfall has not been addressed -- chronic poor character and/or talent evaluation.
 
4 star talent goes to 4 star schools. Until recently, WSU hasn't had facilities worth a shit. Now they do. And I think the talent in Leach's classes is better than what has been at WSU. It's just that they haven't had enough of them thru the door to push the pile forward yet.

4 star talent goes to schools that have more then 10 bowl games in 100 years.

4 star talent goes to schools that have stadiums that seat more then 50,000 people.

If you want 4 star talent you have to have what 4 star talent is looking for.

Right now, WSU has a QB coach that draws 4 star talent. What else???

If Leach lands recruiting classes consistently filled with 3 star kids that will probably be better then any other coach at WSU has done. The issue is coaching them, keeping them, growing them. You're not going to consistently beat schools with 4 star talent if your kids aren't coached up, grown up and have been in the system for years. So WSU will continue to lose until the roster balances out and kids stick around. That's when WSU will close the gap and become a much tougher out in recruiting and on the field.

Coaching is like teaching math. You start with addition, then subtraction, then multiplication, then division, then algebra, etc....

Imagine if you were a coach and every year you could only teach addition? You'd like to teach algebra or better. You need to teach algebra or better to beat SC. But you can't. You can't because you have 8 freshmen in your 2 deep on defense. You can't because the previous coach had such a shitty strength coach that your DL gets pushed out of the way. You can't because kids are stubborn and hanging on to the past DC's scheme. So their refusal turns into a mess of responsibilities when they line up. Half yours, half the last guys.

If you're going to take 3 star or even 2 star athletes and beat SC, you need them in the program long enough to be able to teach them from addition thru algebra. If you're going to run a 34 defense, the kind the Pittsburgh Steelers run with blitz packages coming from everywhere, you can't do that only teaching addition.

If you're going to teach a multiple front defense, you'd better make it easy to learn from the start. Or you'll get embarrassed as kids from Stanford are running wide open down the seam towards the endzone.

If you're going to run an offense that requires WR's and QB's to be on the same page, you'd better hope you don't have a WR that refuses to do what you ask and instead does his own thing. That will embarrass you on national TV.

That talent gap will be there until WSU pushes in more chips and builds a shrine to football. Similar to what Oregon has done. Until then, the issue is getting quality kids and keeping them through their eligibility. That way you can teach them and have savvy football players on the field needed to give SC a run for their money.

I hope I didn't confuse anyone with my math teaching analogy.
 
Biggs, your math analogy adds up for me.....

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Actually, it is pretty similar to the way that I look at it. I'd add to that by noting that even after a program reaches some level of stability, you will occasionally have entire units (LB's, DB's, etc.) eliminated by a big graduation plus some combination of injuries, disciplinary issues and academics. Then you have a stable organization with one particularly green unit, and that creates problems. Just look at the O line that the Ducks had on the field against us last fall if you want an example. Fortunately for Oregon, many of those guys came back within a few games and were able to play. We were not so fortunate with our DB revolving door last year.

I also agree that it is pretty clear that Leach has been upgrading the athletes, but it takes a couple of years for those kids to push the pile forward. I think we'll see further evidence of that this year...we have what look like solid units at O line, WR, RB and DL. But not all units are solid yet, and our season will hinge on how the rest play out.
 
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