RECAP: Washington State Whipped Again, 65-17 By Oklahoma State

I did see some positives.

While the D was dismal, try were able to force some three and outs early. I also saw some nice hits here and there.

 The punt coverage I thought was stellar (at least through the first half, I was drug away at half time by my friends who are casual sports fans at best).

Marques Wilson is a beast, tuel did well protecting the ball (minus that first play which I’m unsure of who is to blame and I’ll leave it at that), and staden could really run and I’m surprised he only got three carries.

 I also think the fact that we were able to get first downs and tuel remained upright A LOT longer is a huge step up from last year.

I hope these guys can rebound and relieve their (and our) frustrations on MSU next week.

Now, obviously we’re all upset. I knew going into today that we’d lose, and probably by multiple TDs. Still, a sliver of hope remained that we might make it close at the end. A sort of “moral victory”, if you will. Obviously, that’s not the case.

Instead of going on FIRE CPW rants like a lot of other Cougs, I’d like to talk about some of the positives we saw today. Or, we can just talk about how bad the announcers were, and how big of a douche Dan Beebe is. Either one is fine.

Marquess Wilson is going to be a monster. Yes, I realize that was more bad coverage than him making a play, but his 2nd “TD”, he drug the defender a while instead of going down on first contact. Not only does he possess speed and quickness, he’s strong.

For a little while, at least, Jeff Tuel was making crisp, tight throws. As Jeff points out, somewhere towards the middle of the game, he started floating ducks instead of tight spirals, and something had to be wrong physically, because you just don’t lose your mechanics like that. I’m not saying he’s hurt or anything, but perhaps the hit he took on the Wilson deep ball made him anxious. Who knows. What I did like was the scrambling. He didn’t take off without making reads; rather, he looked at his progressions, saw he had room to run, and instead of forcing a ball into a tight window, decided to pick up yards with his legs. What scared me was him diving instead of going into a slide. I know he wants to eek out that extra yard or two, but man, it ain’t worth it. Slide, dude. Slide.

Reid Forrest, or, as the announcers said on multiple occasions, Forrest Reid, was pretty good too.

Nico Grasu. Holy crap. It was one of those “NO NO NO….wait….YES YES YES!” situations on the 56 yarder.

One thing I liked was our defense laying the wood to the OK State receivers. The announcers gave them no credit, instead saying OSU was “dropping balls”. The balls were being separated from the receiver because of hits, not bad hands. Although, I did see one instance of alligator arms across the middle, which made me extremely happy. It never happened again, but still, progress.

The offensive line again looks like it’s going to be a problem, but on a few plays at least, it held. I don’t know what Wulff has up his sleeve, but I’m not going to shout for anyone’s job after one game.

It’s really hard, though, because I’m preaching patience, and I’m the least patient person in the history of ever. It’s also 2:17am and I’ve had a lot of Jameson and Sour Patch Kids so I’m a lot happier now.

Go Cougs.

Sorry if you disagree. This is just one man’s viewpoint.

But he’s clearly over-matched and in over his head. I’m beginning to wonder whether anyone can revive this program.

Tuel looked great, burned us deep several times. Had me very worried for a while. Your secondary looked pretty good, dropped a pick six or two though. Get the first one and it would have been a tie game. Offensive line played decent for about a half. And shit, a 56 yard field goal? That’s big time. Anyways, good game guys, hopefully y’all can put it together next week and start rolling. Good luck the rest of the season.

It’s tough to swallow another blow out in lieu of a 14 point loss, but the season ending injury by Ricky Galvin may be the most painful part of yesterday.

My expectations were that the Cougs could now hold a tight game against a moderate FBS competitor and injuries would be few and far between (using lasts years Cougs as a baseline).

Since neither of those happened, I think it’s more natural to move to the Fire CPW crowd; it’s year 3 folks! I still have some hope and few three and outs in the first were actually surprising. And thank the lord Grasu has got PAT’s down!

Anyway, let’s look at MSU to show some mental toughness out of the kids after a hard loss and read www.twitter.com/typicalhusky for a laugh…

As I mentioned in the game thread, my phone literally broke in the middle of us getting stomped on in the 3rd quarter. That made me get angry at the cougs. This game just sucked big.

But I suppose, it is just one game against a ridiculous passing offense. We should win next week, and get the team’s confidence back up. We can see how SMU looks today against Texas Tech, and go from there.

It could be worse, at least we didn’t lose to Jacksonville State.

I saw the exact same team on the field as I did last year. Yes, there are no denying that there were positives in the game (Wilson TD, Grasu FG). But I’ll bet if we go back to the recap of last years Stanford game, we will see that we saw some positives in that game too, and we all know how that season turned out. Now weather the cause of yet another drubbing rests on the players or the coaches, it’s hard to say. But if we go in to the MSU game looking like we did today, MSU might be the next Jacksonville St.

At some point though, a change needs to be made. I don’t think that the excuses of the past few years apply anymore. There is talent on this team now. We’ve seen glimpses of it both in practice and in the game yesterday. And at some point, you have to stop blaming Bill Doba and start taking a long hard look at the new regime. I know there was the post yesterday about how you believe in Paul Wulff, and that’s fine. It’s your opinion and your entitled to it. Personally, I’m on the other bandwagon that believes that he is just in way over his head. I’m not saying that he is a bad coach, because he did have some success at Eastern. Instead I’m saying that he was the wrong guy for the situation. Right now, we are just looking for improvement. On the field, I just have a hard time finding it. I think he needs to go ASAP so we can find a new coach and hopefully salvage some of the incoming recruiting class. Ted Miller said it, this next game is a must win for him. And I’m not looking for a win, I’m looking for a complete drubbing of MSU. If that doesn’t happen, that’s basically the team showing that they are of FCS talent, which we all know is not true.

I’m trying to be as openminded about this as I can. Maybe the first game was just a fluke, and if that happens, Jeff, feel free to say I told you so. I just have a hard time believing that is going to happen.

-I would hope Fullington is the RT from here on out as he seemed to hold his own. I mean, did anybody notice a big difference from true freshman Fullington at RT and fifth year senior Hannam? I didn’t and that, unfortunately, says a lot about the Cougs troubles on the line.

-While the Juco left side was a bit shaky early I thought they somewhat settled down as the game wore on. The O-line still isn’t great but there aren’t many Jucos that step in and make immediate impacts in those spots. If it takes a JC WR a few games to really find his groove I would expect at minimum the same from an O-lineman. In short, I think the line could be a lot better as the season moves on.

-Mizell for Ledgerwood seems like an obvious change to make, even if he’s still a bit behind on the schemes; Cougs need a playmaker in the middle somewhere…anywhere.

-They might have to think about trying something different at DE, specially Kooyman’s side. I think they might need Rankin more to the outside than at DT, although I realize we don’t really have the depth to do that. Perhaps Pole can get into the DT rotation allowing Rankin to move around because I think they need a playmaker on the edge, badly.