without cracraft
- Thread starter longtimecoug
- Start date
No kidding.
It's like WSU only has one receiver in Gabe Marks who caught the 3rd quarter score.
Guess what....UW will smother him the rest of the way and make someone else come up with the catches.
It's like WSU only has one receiver in Gabe Marks who caught the 3rd quarter score.
Guess what....UW will smother him the rest of the way and make someone else come up with the catches.
With Cracraft we'd be kicking arse!!!! Clearly the difference in this game, We are a possession receiver from having this game in hand. Some claim it is an athlete gap problem, but they aren't watching. Are receivers are bigger, faster and stronger than the Husky DBs..
Ah, Cracraft. Falk out was the reason for the loss last year, bit player (but good player) Cracraft reason this year.
No excuses. Cracraft was missed, but we should never be blaming a loss on a receiver being out. QB is obviously a big deal, but that's about it. I know Leach won't make any excuses.
UW is clearly better...and it pains me to say that.
UW is clearly better...and it pains me to say that.
45-17 the better team clearly won. As much as not having Cracraft hurt, it doesn't change the difference in the d-line play. Two 4th down stops around the one yard line were in effect turnovers.
So it really was 6 turnovers to 1. Last year was 7 turnovers to 1.
Can't have that and expect to win.
All the talk about the offense, WRs, QB, etc....none of those guys play on defense. This game was mainly decided because our D could not pressure Browning or make tackles. We fell way too far behind to catch up vs. a really good team. Huge talent gap between UW and WSU.
Glad Cougar
Glad Cougar
No shite!!! I was being sarcastic.... We are undertalented at every position but QB and RB, and at RB we are Pac-12 average. We lost to EWU because we don't have the talent margin to win when going through the motions. This would have been a 1 win team under Wulff and 3 win team under Price, IMHO. Ryan Nall out running our secondary says it all. Leach is a hell of a field coach, but he has hit a ceilling, unless he can improve his recruiting.
17 points doesn't win many games at the college level. It was a team loss to a better team across the board.
True, it was a team loss but our offense became more one-dimensional once we got way behind. It made it imperative for the offense to score a TD on just about every possession. No argument about UW being better across the board.
Glad Cougar
ps....actually, our special teams play was better than UWs. But nothing else.
Glad Cougar
ps....actually, our special teams play was better than UWs. But nothing else.
cracraft being out wasn't the reason, we lost to a better team, him being out just kind of took the wheels out of our offense. even with him we would probably hve lost
With him - and better decision making by Falk at the goal line - WSU likely loses 45-31 or 45-38 had Falk hit Gabe Marks who had beaten two UW defenders deep.
Again, everyone needs to relax. The Huskies were the better team yesterday but that loss came down to a few moments that made huge differences. Morrow, who rarely fumbles, puts the ball on the ground and gives the Huskies the ball to the mutts in our territory. We fail to score three times when we were deep in Husky territory but a Husky fumble gave us one score back so let's only count two of them.
WSU was down 35-17 in the third quarter. Those three changes above and we are leading 31-28 instead and not pressing in an attempt to win. The teams are not as different as the score looked. When we dumptrucked Arizona, Leach said in the postgame interview that you don't make too much of blowout wins. Same goes here. You people need to relax.
WSU was down 35-17 in the third quarter. Those three changes above and we are leading 31-28 instead and not pressing in an attempt to win. The teams are not as different as the score looked. When we dumptrucked Arizona, Leach said in the postgame interview that you don't make too much of blowout wins. Same goes here. You people need to relax.
I appreciate your attempts to be measured here, but let's honest: the UW now has deep talent and great coaching. The best we can hope for is great coaching, but when the coach on the other side of the field is at least as good as you AND most of your 1s wouldn't start on his team, it's clear we're not going to win most years. We'll catch them in down years or in exceptional games, but it's tough to see us doing better than about 0.300 or 0.400 against Petersen over the long haul.
The Air Raid is a blast to watch, but after 5 years of observation, it has pretty reliably wilted against balanced teams with tough defenses. The UW has won 4 of 5 vs. the Air Raid, and Petersen has won all 3 of his - by an average of 21 points. The average Apple Cup result for WSU is total humiliation. Next year we will play another extremely talented and well-coached UW team, but this time on the road in a famously rocking stadium - at this point I wouldn't take a bet on us turning it around.
The Air Raid will continue to put all its resources into the offense and cobble together whatever's left on defense, and we will continue to go bowling. Some years will be better; some worse. But we are by design half a team and that's rarely formula for greatness, or consistently defeating tough, balanced teams. As someone who remembers the lean years, I'm OK with this... but I don't see us turning into a consistent football power.
The likelihood that we will not beat the UW fifty percent of the time is beside the point. As a WSU fan, we should all know that is highly unlikely over time. The joy of beating them one third of the time far outweighs the two thirds of the time we lose to them. That is the essence of being a Wazzu fan.
Some of us have mostly contempt for Jim Walden, but the guy knew how to get his team ready for the Apple Cup. I have to give him credit for that.
I can live with losing to the Poo-dub, but the way we lost yesterday is BS; those guys played like pansies. How many times did Wicks shy away from contact when he was getting near the first down marker with a defender coming on? He's a big dude, he could lower his shoulder and put a hit on the DB, but he'd slow up and avoid the contact. Williams did the same thing on that 3rd and 2 when he danced laterally rather than lowering his head and hitting somebody and probably getting a first. Receivers were catching the ball and going to the turf rather than fighting for more yardage. Hanser--a 240 LB--couldn't get off a block by their damned QB when they had the RB bottled up in the backfield and allowed him to get the edge for a big gain. I can live with not have as athletic a player, but the lack of fight and willingness to hit back was shite. As the saying goes, it's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.
I'd be interested to see how many scholarships were allocated to each side of the ball. If it's equal, there is no argument that Leach is putting more into the offense then the defense. That argument holds no water. If you wanna argue that the offense has more talent because they're taking the best athletes, you'd have to ask yourself would kids come to WSU and stay at WSU if they knew there was a chance they'd change positions?
I believe the WSU build will take 8 years. How many times in the last 100 years has WSU gone to back to back bowl games? How many times has WSU gone to 3 bowl games in a row? In 100 years has there ever been a stretch of 5 winning seasons consecutively?
And we have fans upset that WSU, while having put zero effort into their football program for 100 years, is not able to turn it around in 5 seasons.
I'm not in love with the product on the field. I did not see inspired, hard nosed, all day tough, well coached football yesterday. I also believe, for my own reasons, that a passing offense at WSU is the way to go. I hate the 34 defense.
I believe the WSU build will take 8 years. How many times in the last 100 years has WSU gone to back to back bowl games? How many times has WSU gone to 3 bowl games in a row? In 100 years has there ever been a stretch of 5 winning seasons consecutively?
And we have fans upset that WSU, while having put zero effort into their football program for 100 years, is not able to turn it around in 5 seasons.
I'm not in love with the product on the field. I did not see inspired, hard nosed, all day tough, well coached football yesterday. I also believe, for my own reasons, that a passing offense at WSU is the way to go. I hate the 34 defense.
I'm reacting to the idea that yesterday was the sum of a few fluky moments that put the game out of reach; moments you wouldn't expect to dictate future games. What I saw was a team that was outschemed and outclassed from the word 'go'. Just to recap the first sequence of events, UW goes 76 yards for 7, WSU coughs it up and UW goes 46 to make it 14, WSU settles for a FG, UW goes 61 yards in 2 plays to make it 21, WSU punts, UW goes 57 yards to make it 28-3. End of first quarter - and also, ballgame. At the time I argued the fumble was a fluke that had major implications on the score (the latter half was correct), but over the next 3 quarters it became clear that was the rule and not the exception. Missed tackles, missed assignments, bad angles, bad decisions, 4 turnovers, a defense on roller skates... no flukes there. Yesterday's beatdown was not an Any Given Saturday type of situation. It was a systematic and complete thumping that will continue into the foreseeable future. Again, given where this program was 5 years ago, I still pinch myself to think we can still go bowling most years in spite of games like this.
Regarding resources on offense vs. defense, CML is known for his offense - that's where all of his attention goes. Unlike Muschamp, Saban, or other defensively-minded coaches, his approach to defense is "do it for me." Hard to believe that has zero impact on team personality (try telling your kids they need to be great athletes and then outsource the academics and see what happens), but it would be interesting to run through each CML unit's historical ranking in conference (B12 + P12). How have his offenses fared in conference vs his defenses and how much do we think that has to do in terms of priorities?
Marks was right in calling out his teammates for being "soft." We've been pansies in four straight ACs.
I agree, even if he couldn't get his teams ready for most other games...
Speed off each edge, the two largest human beings you can find at defensive tackle, linebackers that run sideline to sideline making tackles. The Doba 43.
I can't disagree with many of the comments here, but we could have stayed in it early if we had not dropped balls and if Luke had played like he can and did for 8 games.
They made all the plays, we boffed a handful that would have kept us close in the first half.
One more thing. Where was sweet? Did he have any catches?
They made all the plays, we boffed a handful that would have kept us close in the first half.
One more thing. Where was sweet? Did he have any catches?
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I'm not a big hybrid guy. Everything you said is money. I want DD and Issac clones on the edge and two big ol' hosses in the middle to take up a large amount of space with quick LBs and DBs that jam TF out of WR at the LOS.
