Washington State Recap

While I still have not had time to re-watch the game, I want to say that it is good to get a win, and finally become bowl eligible.

In my comments before the game, I said I though that Longshore would start and Tedford would try to run the ball and have long, time consuming drives. Well, he proved me correct, with two almost ten minute drives. The issue was, we also turned the ball over again three times, and therefore we failed to score a few times when we should have. This is a game that we should have dominated, and instead we squeek out a win.

That being said, it is nice to get a win again. Forsett gained over 100 yards, and over 1000 for the year, which is great considering this is the 9th game.

Longhore was shaky, but at least did not throw a game losing INT.

I was hoping that the score would have been a bit more compelling for Tedford to put in Riley. But that being said, it appeared that Nate seemed more healthy.

Once again, it is the offense that is killing this team, not the defense. The defense proved it again Saturday with a great performance, although letting two long passes in the 4th quarter almost bring a losing team back brought back memories of Colorado State (who still only has one win!). But they did what they had to. Half of the passing yardage for the Cougars was in the 4th quarter (mostly on those two plays), and we held their anemic running game to less than three yards per carry. The Bears shut them out in the first half.

Our offense, though, was pretty bad. We were also held to less than 3 yards per carry until Justin's 44 yard run in the 4th quarter to give the winning TD. We held the ball for over 37 minutes, and had over 81 plays to their 68. Yet they had more yardage than us. We were held to less than 5 yards per play for what I think is the first time this season.

The offensive line is a testament to quality pass protection. They excel at that, giving up no sacks for I think the 5th game this year. We also completed 67% of our passes. The problem is, the percentage of pass completions that went for success was very low (success meaning first down or score). We only had 13 passing first downs in 39 attempts - one of three attempts, for a 5.5 yard per attempt average. We are lame thowing the long ball.

They used to be good at run blocking as well. We only had success running on 9 of 42 carries. That is, a first down 21 percent of the time we ran the ball. If you want to be able to run the ball successfully, that needs to be at least 33 percent.

The shining bright spot in this game is that we only had three penalties for 35 yards. And our turnovers did not turn into points for the other team - they just took away our scoring opportunities. I guess that is what happens when you turn the ball over on their side of the field.

The other thing I think that happened is that after Nate threw the long ball on first down, and was picked off, we stopped going down the field on first down. That is your coach losing confidence in you. We did actually pass quite a bit on first down in the first half (9 runs on first down, 9 passes on first down in the first half). But in the second half, we slowed that down a bit, running for twice as many on first down (10) as passing (5) on first down. So we took our foot off the gas.

We also did not pass in the opponents 10 yards or less territory. In fact, we ran on 10 of 10 plays in ten yards or less. How hard is that to defend? I do not think it is Forsett (who actually scored on one of those 10 plays), but the total lack of imagination by the coaching staff when under 10 yards to goal. Just wait until the USC game - do you really think Jeff Tedford is going to throw 4 times from the 10 yard line like in 2004? Look for power running up the middle.

Over the last 4 games, our offense has averaged 20.5 points per game. Once again, it is easy to see where we could have improved, and played better. But we are becoming way to easy to defend. We have good / great players, but our scheme is getting old. The coach needs to become more creative with our play calling and become more aggressive. That being said, this was a game plan that you could see coming a mile away, and it worked. So let's take the win, and hope that JT knows this will not win next week and he changes up a bit.

GO BEARS!!!