In today's newsletter ...

• Off the Top: What’s real?

• What We Liked: Defensive game plan

• Who Impressed: John Mateer

• What Needs Work: Offensive line (again)

• Up Next: Bye

Off the Top: What’s real?

It’s not exactly a controversial statement to say that, through three quarters of Washington State’s game at Boise State on Saturday, the Cougars had not played great. They came into the game 4-0, dreaming big dreams about what might be possible in this season of purgatory, and they had certainly not put their best foot forward as they trailed by two touchdowns heading into the final frame.

Having driven to the Boise State 33, they needed something big. And they got it on the first play: A strike over the top from John Mateer to Kyle Williams, pulling the Cougs to within a TD at 24-17 with virtually the entire fourth quarter left to play.

After last week’s heroics, a comeback from two TDs down hardly seemed out of the question, despite the increased level of competition and despite the hostile environment.

Four plays later, Ashton Jeanty was in the end zone for the third time after what seemed like his 997th, 998th, 999th, and 1000th broken tackles of the evening, the margin was once again two TDs …

And it all fell apart.

I don’t need to rehash that ugly fourth quarter for you. You watched it. (And if you didn’t watch it because it got too late for you … I’m envious, actually.) It was a disaster of a train wreck of an implosion of a magnitude that heretofore we’ve really only seen in Apple Cups, I think. With 14:52 left in the game, we were within a score; with 4:16 remaining, we were on the wrong end of a four-TD blowout.

A lot is being made of that fourth quarter, and I do understand that. It’s incredibly deflating as a fan to get that invested in a game, only to have it get embarrassingly out of control, and when you add in the larger potential implications — assuming you allowed yourself to dream — it’s not a real pleasant experience.

But I think way, waaaay too much is being made of the fourth quarter and the final margin — at least in terms of its predictive value. For my money, the first three quarters were actually much more indicative of the actual competition level of the game, and by just about any metric, it’s was a game with razor thin margins.

For example, if you weren’t watching the game, and I only showed you this … would you conclude that one team was behind by two touchdowns? And if did tell you that one team was behind by two touchdowns, might you have speculated that there must have been a special teams or defensive TD in there somewhere?

The devil, of course, is in the details — and sequencing. Those six penalties and four sacks loomed large as drive killers for WSU, and the Cougars’ one turnover came at the absolute worst possible time: With the team marching down for a potential game-tying score as the first half wore down.

Thing is, I don’t place a lot of predictive value in problems that come from sequencing. Just because a team makes a bad play in a certain spot in a certain game doesn’t necessarily mean they’re chokers or going to be prone to very specific mistakes in very specific situations going forward. These guys had been lauded for a couple of weeks for their ability to make big plays when it mattered. In this one, their mistakes sabotaged themselves.

And — again — we should remember that we were within one score for most of the night. Even after Boise State had scored to go up by two TDs, we got right back within one score after one play in the fourth quarter. There was no reason to think it would be impossible to get a stop or two and give ourselves a chance to win.

Which brings me to this: I also don’t place a lot of predictive value in the defense getting beaten to an emotional pulp by the best offensive player in all of college football.

I think most everyone knew coming into the game that Jeanty was really really good. I think there also was a thought among our fans that if we just tackled pretty well, we could contain him. I think those fans had never watched Jeanty play, because many people seemed entirely amazed at what he was doing to our defense.

Folks, if you don’t know this by now: He has done that to everyone this year — including Oregon. If not for a couple of very ugly special teams TDs that they allowed, the Broncos very likely would have ridden Jeanty’s legs to a win at Autzen Stadium, too.

We know Kyle Thornton is a good tackler. We know Buddah Al-Uqdah is a good tackler. We know that our defensive linemen are good tacklers. They all were in position — repeatedly — to bring him down. Sometimes, they were able to. But plenty of other times, Jeanty looked a man running through children, and we know that these guys are very much not children.

Jeanty is Superman. And while my emotions wanted to go off the rails Saturday night at what vaguely looked like the defense “giving up” in the fourth quarter, I also had to remind myself that I — a chubby middle-aged man on a couch who never was an elite athlete — cannot fathom what it might be like to try and get Superman to the ground for three hours.

To wit, I call this drive, “my god we are so so so very very tired and very very frustrated from trying and trying and TRYING to tackle this ridiculous cyborg”:

Again, I ask: What predictive value does this have? It was the fourth quarter of a game in which we were down by two TDs and needing a big play with the ball in the hands of a potentially generational running back. When is that going to happen again?

I understand the disappointment of losing the game. I really do. I’m very bummed out to have it happen like that, with that final margin. But beyond what I think is the limited applicability of the fourth quarter, I also don’t think losing this game really derails any hopes we had for the season.

Did it nuke our CFP chances? Maybe? But if you thought it was on the table before, I see no reason why you’d think it was completely off the table now, provided they win out, and do it with some style. ESPN says we still have a 20% chance of winning out and a 12% chance of making the playoff.

But I also think most of you were in the same boat as me, having some fun with the possibility of the CFP while also acknowledging it was highly unlikely from the jump. Which means our sights turn back to bowl game possibilities, and I just don’t see this having a major impact on that front. Remember: We’re still part of the old Pac-12 bowl affiliations — as are the 10 defectors. Since the teams all play in different conferences now, the 12 teams will be ordered by overall record for bowl selection. I’ll save the deep analysis for later in the season, but getting to 10 wins probably gets you back to the Alamo Bowl.

I hate to play the “would you have taken 4-1 heading into the bye” game, because 5-0 was within our grasp. But really: I think you probably would have. I see no reason to not still feel pretty great about where we’re going with what are very likely our most difficult games already behind us.

What We Liked: Defensive game plan

This probably seems like a weird one to pick here, considering the defense gave up 259 yards on the ground to one guy. I know what those numbers say. I also know that Jeanty needed to break a ton of tackles to get to those numbers.