Morning links: Cougars must figure out mobile QBs
Today's post has a final observation from Stanford's 30-28 win at Washington State and our daily offering of links.
-- WSU must solve its rushing QB conundrum. With 19 seconds left in the 2006 Rose Bowl, Vince Young rushed for nine yards on fourth-and-five, scoring the game-winning touchdown and putting the final bow on one of college football's greatest bowl performances ever.
Because of that score – Young's third rushing touchdown of the night – the Texas Longhorns were able to beat two Heisman Trophy winners and a USC team that was perhaps the second most-talented team in the history of college football (the 2001 Miami Hurricanes being, without a doubt, the most talented).
Young was by no means one of the game's first rushing quarterbacks – it took decades before passing was the quarterback's primary method of advancing the football – but that moment is a useful symbolic marker for the last decade's uptick in the number of dual threat quarterbacks.
Prior to Young there was Michael Vick, and after him fleet passers such as Colin Kaepernick, Pat White, Robert Griffin III and Tim Tebow made defensive coordinators apoplectic by adding an entire new offensive dimension to account for.
As spread offenses became more in vogue over the last decade or so, it makes sense that more high schools started putting their best athletes under center. Schools are recruiting very good passers who also happen to be fast, rather than athletes who can do a reasonable impersonation of a quarterback on passing downs.
All that is to say that it's not especially surprising that the Cougars defense has played it worsts against teams with mobile quarterbacks. It's always going to be tougher to play against an offense with more weapons at its disposal, and a team isn't necessarily making the sacrifices in the passing game by having a running quarterback that it used to.
But, the WSU passing game no longer resembles a cheesecloth and in fact ranks No. 2 in the Pac-12 in passing yards given up per game. The Cougars have gotten quite good against running backs – giving up 115 combined yards on 28 carries by Christian McCaffrey and Nick Wilson (4.1 yard average) is very respectable. So, defending running quarterbacks appears to be the area the WSU defense still has the most room for potential improvement, and an area that by fixing an OK defense can become a very good one.
And if the Cougars get better at defending against running quarterbacks, the defense will get better in other areas, too.
Stanford quarterback Kevin Hogan finished the first half of Saturday's with minus-26 rushing yards and the Cardinal defense averaged just 2.7 yards per play. But in the second half, Hogan ran the ball with great success, gaining 138 yards on the ground with a 15.3 yards per carry average. During the second half, with the WSU defense trying and failing to account for Hogan's runs, the Stanford offense averaged 8.1 yards per play.
There was a similar effect observable in the previous week's win at Arizona. The Wildcats did not utilize mobile quarterback Jerrard Randall in the first half and so its offense managed just 5.5 yards per play. In the second half, Randall rushed for 105 yards and the Wildcats picked up 8.4 yards per play.
A common factor in both of those games was that the WSU defense was not specifically preparing for a running quarterback. The Cougars doubtlessly spent much of the game prep for Arizona planning for starter Anu Solomon, who can run but not like Randall can. The Cougars acknowledged after the Stanford game that they did not expect Hogan to be such a threat to rush the football.
Against Oregon State, the Cougars were no doubt aware that Seth Collins runs are a staple of the Beavers offense. And so, while Collins still did some damage with his legs, there was not a significant impact on WSU's ability to defend against passes, or OSU's running backs.
Now for some links:
-- We follow Saturday's game with today's story about how the Cougars handled the sudden defeat in the immediate aftermath.
-- Plenty of bowl projections to pass along. Two ESPN writers have the Cougars spending the holidays in Las Vegas. Jerry Palm sees the Cougars in San Diego for the Poinsettia Bowl. Jason Kirk projects the Cougars to play in the Armed Forces Bowl.
-- The Cougars slip to No. 5 in ESPN's Pac-12 Power Rankings.
-- Brian Floyd says the Cougars are legit.
