Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Washington State needs good start to bounce back from miserable 2014 season

With returning starters at quarterback, along both offensive and defensive line and every assistant coach back from the program’s first bowl trip in a decade, excitement swirled around the Washington State football team in 2014. That passion was quickly doused when the Cougars lost their first two games despite being favored in both.

Mike Leach and his team will attempt to turn last season into a temporary blip in the program’s positive momentum with what he has called his best team yet at WSU.

As athletic director Bill Moos recently told KJR sports radio hosts Jason Puckett and Ian Furness, “It would be a great year to win seven or eight games.”

Making two bowl games in three years would give the Cougars a groundwork for sustainable success by helping with recruiting, bringing back fans and bolstering Moos’ fundraising efforts. But the Pac-12 is once again expected to be among college football’s toughest conferences – the Cougars play five AP Top-25 ranked teams during one six-week stretch – and there is little margin for error.

The Alex Grinch effect

If WSU had only had a mediocre defense in 2014, the Cougars might well be coming off their second consecutive bowl trip. The WSU defense gave up 38.6 points per game – No. 114 out of 125 teams. Even more glaring, it only forced eight turnovers, tied with Georgia State for the worst among FBS teams.

New defensive coordinator Alex Grinch was hired from Missouri in the offseason to improve those two statistics. If he can, at the very least the defense will stop anchoring an offense that was above average at scoring points a year ago (No. 45 nationally at 31.8 points per game), and is expected to improve with its entire offensive line, running back corps, and most of its wide receivers returning.

Grinch wasted no time putting his signature on the defense, installing a 3-3-5 base look that should put more speed on the field by substituting a linebacker for an additional defensive back.

Overcoming kicking woes

Cougars fans perhaps forgot the anxiety that normally accompanies a kicker’s run-up to the holder or tee during the four-year tenure of Andrew Furney. But they will wait with baited breath after the angsts of 2014, in which the Cougars missed six field goals, costing them at least one win, and watched opposing return men score six touchdowns.

Kicker Erik Powell looks stronger and more accurate in practice, but it will likely take a few made kicks in the early games to calm the fans.

End of the Seattle game

For just the second time since 2002, every WSU home football game will be played in Pullman.

The Cougars tired of the so-called Seattle game, in which WSU scheduled one home game per season at CenturyLink Field in Seattle to serve its west-side alumni and broaden its fan base.

The game was also a moneymaker for WSU; Moos said that the 2012 game against Oregon netted roughly twice what it would have in Martin Stadium. But interest and attendance in the Seattle game dwindled, and the Cougars felt the effects of giving up a game in front of its Pullman crowd, losing the last six games in their home away from home.