Analysis: Upsetting finish leaves no room for moral victories as WSU falls to No. 18 Virginia

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. – Around this time last week, Jimmy Rogers found himself in a stadium side room, talking about a loss. His Washington State team had just come three points away from pulling what would have been one of the most colossal upsets in college football history, dropping a one-score defeat to top-five Ole Miss.

After that one, this general sentiment hovered over the result: The Cougars missed a real opportunity, but if they play the way they did in that one, who knows what they could achieve the rest of this season? If their defense keeps wreaking havoc in backfields, if their offense plays that mistake-free, maybe they could topple ranked foe Virginia next week.

“There’s no moral victories, but nobody can question your effort,” Rogers said of his postgame message last week. “So we’ll learn from it. We’ll get better.”

WSU certainly did so in this 22-20 loss to the No. 18 Cavaliers on Saturday, at least for the first three quarters. But because of a volcanic eruption of miscues, penalties , kickoff mistakes, turnovers and an extraordinary display of lack of discipline, the same kind of positivity does not linger over this result for the Cougars.

This was different. This was a meltdown.

Up by two scores for much of the game, WSU (3-4) collapsed in the fourth quarter, allowing Virginia to finish on a 12-0 surge, capped by a go-ahead safety in the final moments. Eckhaus threw one of his two interceptions in the fourth frame, which turned into a UVA field goal, and with a touchdown and the safety moments later, the Cougars had led their lead slip away like mist through their fingers.

So much went wrong for WSU when it mattered most. In the fourth quarter, right guard AJ Vaipulu was called for three straight penalties, including two false starts and a holding flag. Later in the fourth, Johnny Lester – who had to move from left guard to right tackle when Jaylin Caldwell, who was replacing the injured Christian Hilborn, also exited early with an injury – was called for a false start. Two plays later, Virginia took the lead on the safety.

“Well, we practice with crowd noise,” Rogers said. “It’s a focus thing more than anything. The holding, we had several false starts. We gotta lock in. We’re gonna play in tough venues, and if we expect to win in them, we gotta focus. It’s a focus thing. So that’s on me. The speakers must not be loud enough. We gotta make it as loud as possible at practice.”

There’s plenty of nuance here, which we’ll get to momentarily, but the truth is much of this loss falls at the feet of WSU’s coaches. They didn’t have their players ready for the noise at Scott Stadium, which holds 61,500. They burned a challenge early in this game, which cost them a timeout, and that would have been handy in a fourth quarter like this one. Facing a third-and-long from their own 1, they also elected to run out of the shotgun, which gave UVA defenders the break they needed to bring down Kirby Vorhees for that safety.

This is also to make no mention of the reason the Cougars found themselves in that position to begin with. On the previous kickoff, wide receiver Leyton Smithson was back to receive the kickoff, but Vorhees was the one to signal for a fair catch. Smithson caught it at the 2, so that’s where the Cougs’ drive started.

After the game, Rogers said he had told his guys not to take the ball out of the end zone, that way the offense would have reasonable field position. Maybe that’s what Vorhees was thinking when he called for the fair catch. But why is he being coached to make a decision like that anyway? Do WSU coaches spend time in practice showing their guys how to call fair catches when the ball isn’t coming to them? As the late Mike Leach would say: You’re either coaching it or allowing it to happen.

“It’s on me,” Rogers said.

Do you coach your players to practice that sort of thing?

“We practice everything daily,” Rogers said. “It’s a basic rule in football.”

There’s also the issue of play-calling. On the Cougars’ first drive of the second half, they had a chance to go up three scores, a commanding lead and some cushion if they needed it. They called one run left, one run up the middle and one throw short of the sticks on third-and-long. Three-and-out. Punt.

Late in the third frame, after running back Angel Johnson sped ahead for a nice eight-yard burst, WSU called a rush up the middle for Vorhees, who was stacked up for a two-yard gain. One play later, a shotgun run up the middle for Johnson, who couldn’t get past the line of scrimmage. Facing a third-and-eight, Eckhaus could only manage a short completion, and the Cougars had to punt again.

Asked directly if his team’s offense got conservative in this second half, Rogers said the Cougs did not.

“No, they executed,” Rogers said, referring to UVA’s defense. “And was the emphasis coming out of half, that we need to attack them. We just didn’t have any success. We had success running the ball in the first half. We had success in everything that we were doing offensively for the most part. And then drives would stall because we’d get behind the sticks, and then it kinda spiraled on us.”

If that’s what Rogers calls attacking – running up the middle for minimal gains when it clearly isn’t working, only to face an obvious passing situation on third-and-long – we would hate to see an actual conservative offensive approach. It’s a strange development from a coaching staff, from Rogers to offensive coordinator Danny Freund, who have shown a shrewd ability to make the same kinds of adjustments in previous games.

But it’s also true that this result still gives the Cougars things to build on. Their rushing offense looked the best it has all season, at least in the first half, totaling 143 yards on the ground. In his first game getting a bellcow type of role, he showed real bursts, and Johnson ripped off his best rushes of his WSU career. In part thanks to the Cougars’ offensive line, a shorthanded unit that carved out space against Virginia’s stellar defense.

And besides, what can Rogers do about Eckhaus throwing two interceptions? If Eckhaus throws his second away, or if he takes a check-down instead, maybe WSU pulls the upset. Rogers made the right choice in pivoting away from Jaxon Potter and going to Eckhaus, but you relinquish control when you let your QB air it out. Eckhaus has shown fantastic highs, but also some concerning lows, which is just the kind of quarterback he is.

On the bright side, WSU will not be playing in these kinds of atmospheres again, at least not this season. The Cougars only found themselves playing in an environment like this – on the road against an ACC power, 60,000-plus roaring, squaring off with the nation’s No. 18 team – because of a set of uniquely awful circumstances, having to cobble together a schedule like this before the rebuilt Pac-12 launches next year.

When that happens, when WSU can return to the confines of a traditional conference setup and play opponents closer in caliber, it’s reasonable to expect the group to avoid the kinds of issues it showed on Saturday night. Give Rogers time. Give him a full transfer portal cycle, a full high school class. Right now, he has 75 new players. It’s hard to win with this hand of cards.

But that’s the thing about this loss in particular: The Cougars had a chance to overcome all that and author their signature win in Rogers’ first year. Who knows the kinds of support that might have flowed to the program after a victory of this caliber. All of that remains possible, but this loss gets filed in a manila folder with this scrawled in red ink.

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