Less than a few weeks after losing his job with the Tampa Bay Bucaneers, former Washington State safety has nailed down another one in the Big Apple.

The Spokesman-Review’s Theo Lawson picks week nine of the Pac-12 Conference football season.

After a somewhat strenuous process, Trey Davis has been cleared to play for Washington State this season. Now the Cougars are busy trying to nail down a role for the USC transfer.

If tossing four more touchdowns and clamping down his fourth win as Washington State’s starting quarterback didn’t do enough for Anthony Gordon’s confidence heading into of the bigger games of the 2019 season, perhaps an encouraging comment from Cougars head coach Mike Leach will do the trick.

Without much turnover on the offensive line, Washington State fans haven’t had, and won’t have, too many glimpses of the young players that’ll be called upon when veterans Fred Mauigoa, Josh Watson and Robert Valencia graduate after this season.

One of the most robust pipelines in the college football coaching world is the one that exists between the golden wheat fields of the Palouse and the evergreen forests of the Willamette Valley.

Washington State (4-3, 1-3) will aim for its first road win, and ranked win, of the 2019 season when it visits No. 11 Oregon (6-1, 4-0) for the Ducks’ Homecoming game.

We’ll take another look at what the Cougars did to piece together a defensive effort that was long-awaited and much-needed in this edition of the Washington State rewind, along with Max Borghi’s production and Blake Mazza’s perfect season.

Tim Burmeister, who was formerly in a defensive quality control position with the Cougars, has been elevated to a position coaching role and will spend the remainder of the year as an assistant linebackers coach.

Other than Wazzu’s first step into the Pac-12 win column, the best news out of Saturday’s 41-10 drubbing of hapless Colorado was Borghi amassing a career high for touches – 21 – in a splendid evening that included a team-best nine receptions and 105 yards rushing, making him the first WSU running back since Jerome Harrison in 2005 to post three 100-yard games in a season.

While the innate connection Anthony Gordon and Brandon Arconado have may be on display to Washington State fans for the first time this football season, it’s actually something that’s been years in the making.