Price Unhappy With Cougars ‘We Don’t Play Football That Good,’ Says Disgruntled Coach

Mike Price prides himself on being able to maintain an even emotional keel under the most trying of circumstances.

He is quick to point out that most things are never as bad as they seem, or as good as they seem - especially on Sunday mornings in the fall when college football coaches face some extremely trying circumstances in the film room.

But after watching video tapes of his Cougars’ 17-13 season-opening loss at Pittsburgh Saturday night, Price admitted things were every bit as bad - even worse, in some cases - as they seemed on the Pitt Stadium sidelines.

And because of that, he is more concerned than ever with getting his team ready for Saturday’s 2 p.m. home opener against Division I-AA power Montana.

“It’s going to be a real challenge for a Cougar football team that isn’t playing as well as they’d like to be playing and isn’t as good as they think they are right now,” Price said Sunday afternoon. “We’re strong and we’re big and that other stuff, but we don’t play football that good. We’ve got to get this thing going in the right direction.”

Price would like to get physical with his team this week and force it to back up some of the words spouted to the media during two-a-day workouts. But Montana presents some unique preparation problems that probably won’t allow that.

“It’s going to be a little bit hard to go out and bang around and learn how to play football when you’ve got a team like Montana coming in,” Price said. “With all of their wide-open trick plays and formations and stuff, you have to prepare more mentally. “I wish we were playing a wishbone team or a single-wing team so we could go out and just bang around and learn how to play football like we say we can play. We need to become better football players instead of just talking about how good we are.”

The Cougars gained just 296 yards against Pittsburgh, and the a major chunk of those came in the final quarter when they march for 80 yards for the touchdown that put them up briefly 13-10.

They went nearly four minutes into the second quarter before recording a first down and didn’t come up with a third-down conversion until their first possession of the second half.

“I thought our offense was better than it is, but it isn’t,” Price said. “We thought we could bang them off the ball and run it up in there, but we didn’t block well enough. No question about it, they were taking the punch to us in the first half.”

Price stopped short of singling out individuals for criticism, but he made it clear that he was disappointed in the play of some veterans, particularly on offense.

And he didn’t seem overly pleased with fumbled exchange between junior quarterback Chad Davis and senior center Marc McCloskey on a fourth-and-two situation from Pittsburgh’s 30-yard line late in the second quarter.

The muffed snap was recovered by the Panthers and snuffed out a scoring threat that was set up by one of WSU’s three interceptions.

“When you have fourth down and one-and-a-half (yards to go) and you run a running play for first down, I expect to make that,” Price said. “I don’t expect to fumble.

“If they come up and dive over the pile and make a great play, that’s one thing. But when we don’t even get the play started, that’s another thing - and that’s veteran players, not rookies, in there making those kinds of mistakes.”

Absent wideouts

Of the 19 passes Davis completed, only nine went to wide receivers - a disturbing fact, considering Price has pledged to open up the offense this season.

WSU’s hesitancy to air it out was most evident on third-down plays when the Cougars went almost exclusively to the run on short-yardage situations and to the short, dump pass to a tight end or running back on long-yardage situations.

Price said his conservative play calling was the result of some defensive surprises Pittsburgh threw his way.

“They were double-covering the wideouts and making you throw underneath and inside,” he explained, “which was something they hadn’t done before. It takes away the deep inside, deep out, deep comebacks and deep corner routes and it takes away your quick hitches.

“When they present that defense to you, you have to work the people inside and that’s why our tight end caught so many passes. Still, we were short on a number of third-down situations - we converted, but we didn’t get the ball downfield for enough.

“Part of that is play selection, because we went into the game thinking one thing and had to change in mid-stream.”

Disappearing act

WSU defensive end Dwayne Sanders, a pre-season All-American candidate, was invisible throughout much of Saturday night’s loss and made only two tackles.

It was pointed out after the game that Sanders had been battling a case of the flu all week, but Price didn’t seem to be buying into that excuse.

“All-American defensive ends get sacks when (the opponent) throws the ball 47 times and we didn’t get a sack,” Price noted.

, DataTimes