Questions abound

PULLMAN — The coaching staff is the same, but that’s about it. New quarterback, new receivers, new defensive line, new secondary, new kicker — and who that is hasn’t even been settled yet.

Questions rule the day around Washington State, and with the season opener just 48 hours away, the most pertinent one seems to be this: Would anything, could anything, be considered a surprise out of these Cougars?

“That’s kind of a hard question,” said head coach Bill Doba, entering his second season at the helm. “I don’t know. I think if we lost them all that would surprise me. I think we’re better than that, yeah. I think if we had a losing season that would surprise me. I think our kids are good enough and we’ve got a good bunch of guys. Again, we need to start strong I think and just build their confidence.”

Starting strong won’t be easy with a tricky, some would say nerve-rattling, opener at New Mexico. The Lobos feature a quirky defense built on confusing the opposition, and a road loss to start the year could put WSU in a hole it can’t afford to dig.

It’s especially true, as Doba suggested, since his young team could use the glass-is-half-full attitude a win would provide. A year ago, it was Doba who was the new guy, stepping up from his role as defensive coordinator to take the reins after Mike Price left. Then, it was the inexperienced head coach with a fairly experienced roster. Now, it’s the other way around.

Just two starters are back on defense, four on offense. And everything that’s anything in this Cougar season revolves around the ability of the replacements to live up to the 10-win clip their predecessors had established.

Even the team’s top player, linebacker Will Derting, finds himself in a new position after moving to the middle from his outside spot and also has had his season in limbo following a dislocated wrist suffered in camp.

Despite the injury and the position swap, he’s just about the closest thing to a sure bet the Cougars have.

“This team is going to have a new personality than what we’ve had,” defensive coordinator Robb Akey said. “That’s forming itself but a lot of it doesn’t take place until you’ve dealt with adversity.”

As Akey and his players have said on multiple occasions this fall, just because players haven’t started doesn’t mean they haven’t played.

“A lot of those guys have played a lot of football for us,” Akey said. “It doesn’t mean they’re going to be perfect; it doesn’t mean anything. It means we have a little more experience than what some people think.

“Anything can happen. We have higher expectations than the outside world does.”

For now, though, it’s probably the offensive and defensive lines that merit the most concern. While both lines have played well at times in camp, they are untested.

On the offensive front, both guard positions were up in the air for the majority of camp and the Cougars are planning on rotating Patrick Afif and Bobby Byrd at the left spot, since neither has separated himself.

And on the defensive line, two of the top three tackles are freshmen in Ropati Pitoitua and Aaron Johnson. Both players did admirably in camp, especially Pitoitua in grabbing a starting job. But all of their repetitions in camp have been against the same guards that are considering a question mark, making everything from the fall thus far a shaky indicator of what’s to come.

The Cougars also have a new set of skill players on offense, with no returners in the backfield or at wide receiver. Quarterback Josh Swogger played intermittently last season in relief and looked good at times; the same can be said of starting running back Chris Bruhn. The wide receiver corps has talent, but was banged up in the offseason and offensive coordinator/wide receivers coach Mike Levenseller has expressed some concern about their learning curve.

It’s the same thing in the secondary, with only cornerback Karl Paymah returning. Two new safeties, Jeremy Bohannon and Hamza Abdullah, are jumping into the fire, as is cornerback Alex Teems, who will surely be tested by teams in the opening weeks.

“We can accomplish everything we accomplished last year,” Teems said. “It just depends on if we want it bad enough.”

As the fall progressed, the Cougars did show signs of coming around. The offense looked poor in the first two scrimmages but made marked improvement thereafter. The defense survived training camp injuries to both captains, Derting and Abdullah, without missing a beat.

“We need to be in the heat of battle against somebody else, deal with adversity, deal with some foreign territories and play against some guys they don’t know real well,” Akey said. “And that we can’t reproduce.

“They’re practicing hard; they’re playing hard. They’re very anxious to do things right.”

The Cougars have said all the right things this fall, accepting their shortcomings and working to overcome them. They’ve corrected some early mistakes and avoided some possible pitfalls.

But with so many unresolved issues left, how many wins does it all add up to?

“That’s for you guys to predict,” said tight end Troy Bienemann, one of a select few Cougars who has started games in two seasons. “Expect us to come out and execute more than anything. To be on the ball and be crisp with everything. We may not have the talent we’ve had the past two years, so that’s how we’re going to have to win.”