Gameday Guide: WSU vs. Texas Tech

Welcome to Cougar Football Saturday, week two! I’d been pondering adding this feature to the newsletter rotation, and the good folks who have a premium subscription said they’d love to have it, so here we are!

In today's newsletter ...

• A chance to make a statement

• Critical Info

• Injury Impact

  • Texas Tech

  • WSU

• Key matchups

• What I’ll be watching for

• What you can watch for

• Other games of interest

A chance to make a statement

After what’s happened in the last 13 months, I’m beyond believing that any single game outcome will make any meaningful difference when it comes to where the Cougars will eventually land in their quest to emerge from conference-affiliation wilderness.

That said … it certainly can’t hurt to show — clearly — that we are still a peer of these Power 4 schools on the field. Destroying Portland State is nice, but picking up a decisive win against a Big 12 school in the “traditional” Pac-12 After Dark slot on Big FOX is something that absolutely cannot hurt the quest. Particularly when the only competition for eyeballs at that time will be Mississippi State/Arizona State on ESPN, Boise State/Oregon on Peacock and USC/Utah State on Big Ten Network. (Try not to laugh too hard at those last two.)

You can bet those stakes are not lost on Jake Dickert and his players, who surely have had this date circled on the calendar. It might not be sustainable to carry a grudge throughout an entire season, as we found out in the wake of beating Wisconsin and starting 4-0 last season. But that first month showed that you can carry one for at least a little while! And you can bet the Cougs will be absolutely fired up for this one.

Hopefully, the crowd will be able to match.

Critical Info

• Kickoff: 7 p.m. PT

• Location: Back Home

• How to watch: FOX on your TV, foxsports.com on your devices

Injury Impact

Texas Tech

Running back Tahj Brooks is the engine that makes the Red Raiders go. He had 27 carries in week one after being one of the most-used running backs in college football last season. The TTU media release gave him a “questionable” designation with an arm injury, but it’s hard to imagine he won’t play. He’s really tough.

On defense, linebackers Joseph Adedire and Dylan Spencer suffered season-ending injuries in fall camp. I wouldn’t normally note that here, but both were expected to be starters, and Tech’s defense looked B-A-D bad bad against Abilene Christian. That’s worth noting because it means significant improvement by the defense might be hard to come by.

Additionally, starting safety C.J. Baskerville is questionable with a shoulder injury. If he doesn’t play, that also would be a major loss for a team that gave up 500 yards passing last week.

WSU

No major injuries to report from week one, but there still are a couple that could have an impact on this game.

Punter Nick Haberer was a late scratch last week after the back injury that has plagued him this fall popped up again. It wasn’t too much of an issue in the punting department; the Cougs only needed to kick a couple of times, and Dean Janikowski did fine. It was more of an issue on field goals, where Haberer is the holder — there were some nervy moments, including a missed PAT on a bad hold by John Mateer. Coach Jake Dickert indicated that they were hopeful to have Haberer back this week.

Cornerback Jamorri Colson — who was supposed to be a starter — remains out, which is not a surprise, but we finally got some reporting on the nature of his injury: It’s a broken jaw, according to Greg Woods’ sources. Dickert has refused to even talk about what the injury is, let alone how it happened, which means you probably only need one guess as to how a football player whose head is protected by a helmet while he’s playing ended up with a broken jaw.

Offensive lineman Fa’alili Fa’amoe remains out with an injury. His return seems to still be a ways off.

Key matchups

TTU’s O-line vs. WSU’s D-line: When you watch Texas Tech throw the ball, you’ll see a lot of the old school Air Raid concepts that were so ubiquitous at WSU when Mike Leach was the coach. Frankly, they look a lot more Air Raidy than we do most of the time. But that’s not their bread and butter: That would be Brooks, who is very, very good. He ran 27 times for 153 yards and added three catches for 14 yards. That’s crazy high usage for a college running back in the year 2024.

He’s not an unstoppable force, though. At one point, ACU contained him on three consecutive carries inside the 5 yard line to force a turnover on downs. The key is getting some penetration and reducing his time to find a crease. If TTU is consistently getting push on our defensive line, he’ll find the soft spot … and then — at 5-foot-10 and 230 pounds — he’s awful tough to bring down. It will be a very long day at that point.

WSU CBs Stephen Hall and Ethan O’Connor vs. TTU WR Josh Kelly: You all know Kelly. You know how good he is. You know how big of a bummer it was to watch him leave after just one stellar season. Tech QB Behren Morton relied on Kelly increasingly as the game went on last weekend, and you can bet WSU will be focused on limiting his targets.

It’ll be a team effort, given that Kelly did a lot of work in the middle of the field last weekend, but we’re guessing that duty primarily falls to Hall, who had a great game against PSU. This will be a step up against a familiar practice foe. O’Connor also looked really good in week 1, but again — big step up this week. If WSU makes life hard for Kelly and TTU’s other receivers, I’m not sure Morton is good enough to carry the offense when the throws get more difficult.

What I’ll be watching for

Continued offensive dominance: I’m not expecting 70 points, but I will be real disappointed if the Cougs can’t figure out a way to hang 40+ on the Red Raiders. Abilene Christian dropped 45 on them in regulation on the road, and it wasn’t an accident — the Red Raiders defense just didn’t look out of sorts, it looked undermanned. Dickert is right that TTU will clean up some of those issues, just like WSU will clean up some of theirs. But the defense I saw take the field in Lubbock is just, frankly, not very good — and WSU ought to exploit it.

What you can watch for

The best way to entertain yourself during the game is to make sure you have a premium subscription and join our game thread on Slack. The second best way is with this:

Other games of interest

Here are some other games you might want to watch today. All game times PT.

Game of the day: No. 3 Texas at No. 10 Michigan. 9 a.m., FOX.

Next opponent: Washington Huskies. Ok, you probably don’t want to watch them. But if you just can’t help yourself, they’ll be on the Big Ten Network at 12:30 p.m. against Eastern Michigan. (Then again, you might not be able to watch it — if you have Comcast in the Seattle or Portland area, it’ll be blacked out because of an ongoing carriage dispute which, of course, is the absolute height of irony.)

In two weeks: San Jose State. The Spartans are going to take on Air Force at 4 p.m. on CBS Sports Network.

Another good game: No. 14 Tennessee at No. 24 NC State, 4:30 p.m., ABC. You also can tune in during this time slot to laugh at Colorado, which travels to Nebraska, on NBC.

Rooting against the traitors:

• Boise State at No. 7 Oregon, 7 p.m. PT, Peacock (lolololololol)

• Utah State at No. 13 USC, 8 p.m. PT, Big Ten Network (lolololololol)