The Monday After: A Texas-sized beat down

In today's newsletter ...

• A meaningful win

• What We Liked: Run baby, run

• Who Impressed: The defensive secondary

• What Needs Work: The passing game

• Final bingo card

• Up Next: The Apple Cup

A meaningful win

If the Washington State Cougars were looking to make a statement with their game against “Power 4” foe Texas Tech, they certainly did that with their 37-16 win over the Red Raiders on Saturday in Pullman.

Jake Dickert, however, would like you to know — emphatically — that is not what the Cougars were trying to do.

“This is not a statement win,” he said. “Washington State has played at the highest level forever; we beat another team that plays at the highest level; and that's it. We've done that hundreds of times, OK? That's the way we look at it. That's what we're excited about.

“We came in to get to 1 and 0. We knew we had to play a certain way, and we went out there and did it. That's what I'm the most proud of. So, I don't want to get into, you know, it was bigger than what it was. We took down a power five team and we're a power five team.”

Well then!

I can appreciate Dickert’s messaging, which clearly got through this week to his players. They didn’t look overly hyped, they didn’t appear to be making this their Super Bowl or whatever. It was a business-like performance.

But this one is out of Dickert’s hands. The Cougs did, in fact, make a statement. And it does, in fact, matter.

Dickert himself suggested as much, probably without meaning to. Right before he declared that this was not a win that was bigger than any other, he said this: “It feels great. Feels great for that locker room, for all the work that I've seen (from) these guys staying here, being committed to this program.”

One could, perhaps, take that as a little shade toward Josh Kelly, who left Pullman to get the bag in Lubbock, only to return and get whooped. But I took it more to mean, yeah, we’re still here. We haven’t changed. We’re not going anywhere. And the players themselves — both current and future — needed that. With apologies to the MWC foes on our schedule, that kind of affirmation doesn’t come from beating San Jose State or Wyoming. Beating Texas Tech, particularly in the manner we did, does.

Perhaps Dickert was solely referring to the conference affiliation stuff that’s outside of the team’s control, and on that front, I think he’s not wrong. No single game is going to tilt the scales, because the issues are far bigger than simply competitiveness. I think the most the Cougars could hope for was to show — again — that they belong where they’ve always been, such that there isn’t hesitation from potential future partners such as the ACC or Big 12, who might be worried that they’re adding a cratering albatross that will never recover from these two years of purgatory.

WSU — again — assuaged those potential fears. Texas Tech was predicted to be a middle-of-the-road Big 12 team, and when everyone woke up on Sunday morning and checked their final scoreboard, they saw that the Cougs are three TDs better than a middle-of-the-road Big 12 team.

Nobody in the rest of the country is going to consider whether WSU is actually that much better than Texas Tech. That’s for us to consider as we look at a team that’s 2-0 heading into this bastardized version of the Apple Cup that’s going to be played at Lumen Field this weekend.

What We Liked: Run baby, run

We all know how much of a liability the run game was last season, and how much it hamstrung the ability of the offense to throw the ball. Well, we appear to have no such issues this season after racking up 301 yards¹ on the ground against the Red Raiders, 197 of them from quarterback John Mateer. 

I suspected that Mateer might be capable of something like this, just given the physical tools, combined with the flashes we saw last year and the long TD run against Portland State. But 21 carries for damn near 200 yards is definitive proof of concept, and the rest of WSU schedule is officially on notice.

Wayshawn Parker had another long touchdown run to finish with 69 yards on 11 carries, and Djouvensky Schlenbaker got in on the action with a pair of TDs. But that wasn’t Schlenbaker’s best work — he did some major damage as the lead blocker for Mateer on QB power.

In all of this, I think something significant can get overlooked: The improvement of the offensive line. I was hopeful that having basically the same guys together for another year would lead to significant improvement from a development and continuity, and it sure looks like that’s the case. Even when the point came that Texas Tech more or less knew what was coming, the line still was able to win at the line of scrimmage.

Esa Pole, Rodrick Tialavea, Devin Kylany, Brock Dieu, and Christian Hillborn: I SALUTE YOU.

(Honorable mention to Cooper Mathers, who was great as a fullback in the I-formation on Schlenbaker’s TDs!)

Who Impressed: The defensive secondary

Perhaps no unit had more question marks heading into the season than the back end of the defense, and that’s really saying something considering that the QB needed to be replaced. But I’m not sure I’ll ever doubt Dickert’s ability to rebuild back there in the future, because the Cougars coach seems to have a preternatural ability to identify corners and safeties who can really play.

The latest crop includes Stephen Hill, Ethan O’Connor, and Tyson Durant, all of whom had stellar games against the Red Raiders. Hill was steady, such that the ball didn’t seem to go his way all that often, and Durant seemed to be everywhere.

But it was O’Connor who really jumped off the screen with two interceptions (only one of which actually counted), a pass breakup, and three tackles. He was much ballyhooed as a recruit, rated as a high-three-star by 247Sports and choosing WSU after flipping from UCLA. He also had reported offers from Colorado, Washington, Alabama and Arizona. Talent was never his issue, and he appears to be putting it all together.

The Red Raiders ended up throwing for 343 yards, but they needed 58 attempts to do it and had to work exceedingly hard for each of those yards. For example, Kelly led TTU with 9 catches and 95 yards. But of those 95 yards, 77 came after the catch. Tech could not get him loose downfield, so they settled for a variety of ways to get him the ball near the line of scrimmage and let him go to work.

That was a theme during the game: Tech had to dive deeeeeeep into its playbook just to get anything going and keep the game close, including a trick play that resulted in a 20-yard TD pass. But they eventually just ran out of ideas, as a team tends to when it has to get super creative in the first half just to keep up. The defensive secondary deserves the bulk of the credit for that.

What Needs Work: The passing game

I don’t want to throw a wet towel on all the good vibes coming out of this win, but Mateer’s day throwing the ball was pretty putrid: 9-of-19 for 115 yards, a TD and and INT. The interception — on his second throw of the game — was a rookie mistake in which he got a little excited and failed to see a safety. From there on out, offensive coordinator Ben Arbuckle didn’t seem to trust Mateer, and Mateer didn’t seem to trust himself.

Even the TD pass comes with the caveat that it was underthrown, tipped by the defense, and reeled in on a brilliant catch by Kyle Williams.

It’s clear that Mateer isn’t the quality of passer that we’ve become accustomed to in the last however many decades of Cougar football. Through two games, he has just 36 passes — I swear, there were games under Mike Leach where we had that many in a half — and has completed just 56% of them.

What’s unclear is how much of a hindrance that will be.

The dimension Mateer brings with his legs is undeniable. What’s also undeniable is that teams will now be gearing up to take that away and dare him to beat them with his arm. Can he throw the ball well enough against a team that’s able to put the Cougs consistently behind the chains? At some point, Mateer is going to have to throw the ball 30+ times. He doesn’t look ready for that … yet.

Final bingo card

If you didn’t play along, here’s how the bingo card turned out!

Up Next: The Apple Cup

Welp, it’s finally here. The September Apple Cup at Lumen Field. Plenty of good seats still available!

As impressive as the Cougs have looked in the first two games, the Huskies have looked equally uninspiring. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re not good — I mean, they might not be good — but at the very least, they’re definitely struggling a little to figure things out at the moment. Against both Weber State and Eastern Michigan, the game was close for a half before Washington pulled away.

Both teams are facing their best competition of the year, and both teams are going to learn a lot about themselves, after which 25% of the season will be in the books.

While I’m obviously not thrilled to be playing this game — and I’m definitely not attending — I am very curious about it. Once again (despite Dickert’s protestations), the Cougs have a heck of a chance to show they belong. Washington, on the other hand, doesn’t have a lot to play for here.

In the past, the Huskies seemed to take their role as the dominant program in this rivalry quite seriously. They have a slew of new players and a new coach and it’s no longer a conference game and it’s going to be at a weird “neutral” venue that’s only 60% full and their whole Big Ten slate — with five ranked opponents — is in front of them.

It’s legitimate to wonder if the Huskies will take it as seriously as they have. You can bet the Cougs will. Will it be enough?

Kickoff is at 12:30 p.m., and you’ll need a subscription to Peacock to watch it.

(Insert joke about “good thing they turned down that Apple TV deal so they could get all that Big Ten exposure!” here.)

1  If you were thinking, “Damn, I bet 300 yards hasn’t happened in a long time!”, it actually happened two years ago against Stanford (306 yards). Before that, it was against Idaho in 2006 (344 yards).