Ted Miller Explores Reasons For Hope And Concern At WSU

I don’t put a lot of stake in last season’s losses affecting this year’s team. The Cougars showed they can play with the rest of the conference. I think, to some degree, if last year’s season impacts this one it grows confidence. WSU did a lot of growing, but you wouldn’t notice it from the standings.

As for a concern, its the defense. The Cougs can put up the offense, but stopping opponents was hard last year. Improved tackling and a better rush defense will yield good things this fall.

Hope: Skill positions – Tuel and our WRs on offense (and to a lesser extent Galvin and Mitz at RB) look to be very good players at this point and should be the strength of our team. On defense our LB corps should be improved (hopefully) and I think our secondary should be reasonably decent as well.

Concern: Trenches – Our line play on both sides of the ball has been atrocious these past 3 seasons. We should be bigger, stronger and better than we have been but at this point I’ll believe it when I see it. If Tuel has no time to throw or we generate no pass rush/can’t stop the run with our front 4 then we’re going to struggle again this year.

I do think that things like confidence, attitude, I guess “heart” if someone wants to call it that, do matter a lot. A 6-0 team should, in my mind, play better than an 0-6 team not only because of talent, but because of a culture of losing. I feel that many teams that have sucked for long periods of time, also continue to suck because what kind of pressure is there to be good?

However, I do agree that Miller may be misjudging the “heart” of this team. Because as you said, when the team should have been down in the dumps, or “who cares?” attitude, they played harder as the season went along. So if anything, at least the 2010 version showed a lot better attitude than one might expect.

Hope: Jeff Tuel and the receiving corps.

Concerns: All of those expressed by Jeff in the article and by prior commenters in this thread, plus one — our punting game.

To add a bit regarding the offense, I don’t think it is going to be the juggernaut people seem to expect. It will be a strength of the team, but I don’t think it will be spectacularly good, owing primarily to the limitations of our offensive line. We were last in the Pac-10 in scoring offense last year, and 8th in the Pac-10 in yards per game.

Will we be better this year than last year on offense? Yes, perhaps. Maybe a credible run game, assuming we can develop one, will make it easier for Tuel to pass and for our O-line to pass block. Maybe Galvin/Mitz is a significant upgrade over Monty/Mitz, although I find that hard to believe. Maybe growth and cohesiveness in the O-line, and having Gonzalez back, will not only make up for the loss of Williams, but will result in the unit being better collectively. Perhaps losing Williams’ horrible snaps will help Tuel significantly.

How much will all of these things help? I’m not entirely sure, but I don’t think it’s enough to make the last-place scoring offense in 2010 any better than average in the Pac-12 in 2011, though, especially when it seemed to me that many teams were hamstrung on offense last year by having their QBs get knocked out for extended periods (e.g., Prince, Riley, Foles, etc.), keeping down the overall offensive numbers for the conference. Maybe that will happen again this year — nobody knows.

I think the loss of Forrest will be a bigger deal than people think, especially given that Wagner looks to be a huge downgrade. Losing 15-20 yards in net punting yards (accounting for returns), and giving up some return TDs on line-drive punts, could really hurt. Forrest punted 66 times last year, about 5 times per game. Being hurt for 75-100 yards per game in field position by having Wagner punting instead of Forrest could be painful, especially given the well-known problems our defense has. Short fields, plus a defense that at best will be somewhere from 9th to 12th in our conference, isn’t good. Perhaps Wagner can do better than that. I’m not sure.

Concern: I’d have to agree with Miller somewhat. I feel like a team that goes into a game feeling like they are a good team is going to play exponentially better than an equally good team that feels like a bad team. A confident team will see an early deficit as something that they can overcome. A not confident team could very well just roll over. Believing alone isn’t going to win you games, but it certainly can’t hurt.

Other concern (rehashed I guess): Run defense. CJ needs to play well. Kaufusi needs to play well, and personally I feel like AHE gets a bad rap around here. He was out of position a lot, but you can’t forget that he’s made his share of big plays as well. On second thought, I wouldn’t place LB as the biggest concern. I’d place them as the biggest unknown. They were able to contain ’Quizz, but then got lit up next game (but to their credit Mizell was held on just about every play, the biggest one coming on a long Polk TD run if I remember correctly).

Hope:
1) Schedule. We should equal last year’s win total after the first two weeks of the season…and there’s no reason not to expect this team to have a chance in each of the first 5 games. We lose home field advantage for the OSU game, but so does UW for the Apple Cup.

2) Passing game. We could see some pretty nice stats by Tuel & Co., especially after the first few games.

3) Field goal kicking. Should be decent, and Furney has already shown he can boom them from 50+.

Concern (same as everyone else):
1) Run defense. I still don’t know how we’re going to stop anyone..

2) Running game. If our D can’t stop anyone, we’re going to need a running game to sustain drives and keep the opposing offense off the field. Will our O-Line and Mitz/Galvin at least keep other teams honest?

3) Pass blocking. Tuel could be right up there with the top QB’s in the conference if he has time and doesn’t have to pick the ball up off the turf every snap.

Right now I put our chances at a bowl game at 50/50, but I’m sure by August I’ll have morphed into a blindly hysterical optimist.

They overlooked us and still won by 3 scores.

Not saying we weren’t improved that day, but I don’t think it is an accurate measuring stick either.

Hope…
Talent – We do have a way more physically gifted and talented group than we’ve seen since Brink’s last season, and maybe even better. I think Galvin is going to be a good one, our recieving corps is incredible, Tuel will have senior-like experience and presence. I think our DB’s will be lights out and if Mizell gets serious our LBs will be hell to deal with as well.

Concern…
Guidance – Just cause you have good clubs, doesn’t mean you know how to golf. I look at the botched 1st and Goal from the 2 series against UCLA and the Montana State scare (see dramatic 4th qtr comeback and not knowing how to correctly run out the clock), and I wonder even with the better parts do they have the coaching to succeed? This staff has rarely had a team prepared to give 4 quarters of effort and hasn’t shown exactly what we are on offense or defense.