This is a position battle that is wide open, and not just in the cliché way that coaches will say when they want to avoid controversy at this point in the year. There’s no separation right now between rising redshirt seniors Trey Tinsley (a former walk-on) and Anthony Gordon, who attempted nine and five passes this past season, respectively. And within Leach’s offense, it’s hard to say those limited in-game reps provide that much of an advantage over the other quarterbacks on the roster like Cammon Cooper or John Bledsoe. And don’t be surprised to hear early enrollee Gunner Cruz’s name come up through the offseason and fall camp. The 2019 signee has a big arm and at 6 feet 5 and 227 pounds, he’s the most imposing in the quarterbacks room.
Their defense was really underrated last year. They kept just about everyone in check. The DC runs a lot of different looksnto confuse tue offense and they have speed on the outside to force tue QB into making fast decisions. Will he an interesting matchup for sure
Don’t scare me none. A healthy King and I like our chances in every game. If our defense even had a pulse last year, we would’ve destroyed a lot of teams and beat a lot of teams that we lost to.
EXACTLY!!! I honestly believe as good as our offense was last year we will be improve this year because we will be more consistent, less stupid penalties, less dropped passes, and we will know how to manage the clock.
I expect us to actually see something on special teams, which we did not see at all.
Seeing our new strength and conditioning coach, I can almost guarantee we are going to be much improved and I expect us to win battles in the trenches. At the very least I do not see fluke injuries happening like they did last year. Injuries of course will happen, but fluke ones shouldn’t happen if you are strengthened and conditioned appropriately.
I expect our defense to be much improved because we will have coaches that actually know how to coach defensive players and more importantly they will make adjustments on defense. These two little things should show a dramatic improvement in the defense.
Put it all together… everybody will be kicking themselves at the talent that we wasted the last two years because of the previous coaching staff.
“Minshew Mania,” though, came with a one-year, non-renewable lease. If the Cougars are to match their achievements from a year ago — or break through and win the Pac-12 North after falling one win shy in each of the past three seasons — they must do so with a new quarterback, and that quarterback must follow the act of one of the most popular passers in school history.
WSU has a strong foundation. Its top four wide receivers (and seven of the top eight) return, as do four starting offensive linemen. Defensive coordinator Tracy Claeys enters his second season after assembling a unit last year that led the league in sacks (38) and finished second in tackles for loss (88). After coach Mike Leach lost half of his assistants to other programs last offseason, he needed to replace only one position coach this year. And though he is loath to reminisce about victories, Leach knows this year’s group can draw from what it accomplished in 2018.
Just dug into them for a writing thing we’re doing and their offense is going to be nasty. They return nearly all their key skill guys and all but 1 of their starters on the offensive line. The starting QB job hasn’t been settled yet but they have an FCS grad transfer and 5th year senior competing for it.
Their defense is pretty shaky and they lose key guys at every level, although like us they went real heavy on recruiting Juco DBs. I think we’ll be able to score some points.
I do like that we’ll be their first serious test (they open w/NMSU and an FCS) and first game away from Pullman next year.
Painful? You want to talk painful? A 2 point loss in the Aloha Bowl was disappointing. The loss at OU in 2004 was painful – 63 to 13 type painful. We still owe OU a whupping to make up for that and the Sun Bowl in1981. Beating OU and PVAM will have us ready to womp Wazzou.
Mike: I was at that Sun Bowl and it was ghastly. My In Laws (from El Paso) and my parents were with us in the stands, and they beat us to death.
So, yeah…I would like nothing better than to beat them at home…
Definitely…especially since we knew we wouldn’t go bowling for a couple of years and wouldn’t be on TV the following season. Should have won that game.