WSU defense in shambles

The play call was right. The boundary was open. A drive-sustaining first down was there to be grabbed.

But when Dwight Tardy – playing with an injured hand – couldn’t hang on to Alex Brink’s fourth-and-two pass with 14 minutes, 45 seconds left Saturday night, and the Arizona Wildcats answered with a 57-yard scoring pass two plays later, any chance the Cougars had for a win expired into the warm desert night.

Though the three-play sequence – a 4-yard Nic Grigsby run began the UA possession – wasn’t the difference in the 48-20 Cougar defeat, it did epitomize WSU’s main problems in what is quickly becoming a season on the brink – with a lowercase b.

The Cougar offense couldn’t execute a relatively simple pitch-and-catch in a crucial situation. And the WSU defense once again couldn’t complete its top priority, limiting the big play.

Those types of failures – along with mystifying mistakes on the punt team – have supplied the impetus for the Cougars’ 2-3 overall record and their second 0-2 Pac-10 start in three years.

One could argue – persuasively – every offensive possession this season is important. With the defense yielding on average more than five touchdowns a game, the offense knows it has to score on almost every possession. That type of pressure can wilt even the most potent attack.

The Cougars are better in just about every offensive category this season, but the defense has gone the other way. In some cases, like pass defense, it’s not even in the same neighborhood.

So even though WSU is averaging better than a field goal a game more than last season, it hasn’t been near-perfect, which is what USC (only two non-scoring possessions) and Arizona (three) have been against them.

Last season WSU yielded 243.1 yards per game, last in the conference. Through five games this year, the Cougars are even less stout, yielding 288.4 yards per game. And though the yards-per-catch statistic is almost exactly the same (12.0 in 2006, 12.1 this season), one of the major goals coming into the season was to lower that number significantly.

It hasn’t happened despite a defense geared to bend but not break. Against Arizona, the defense bent (yielding 186 yards rushing to Grigsby on a hard-to-fathom 6.2 yards per carry) and broke (yielding pass completions of 57 and 65 yards and a staggering 15.7 yards per completion).

Not enough? The Cougars are last in the Pac-10 in third-down stops (69 opponents third downs have resulted in 41 first downs, including 8 for 12 for UA) and red-zone defense (24 times the opposition has got inside WSU’s 20; 22 times it has scored points, lowlighted by Arizona’s five perfect trips).

And things could get worse.

Safety Alfonso Jackson, WSU’s second-leading tackler, knocked himself out of the game when he tried to level 6-foot-6, 250-pound tight end Rob Gronkowski on the freshman’s 57-yard touchdown reception.

Jackson suffered a concussion and a stinger and, though he flew home with the team, he could be out a while. Linebacker Kendrick Dunn, fourth in tackles, also didn’t finish, suffering a left hamstring strain.

And now the competition takes a step up, with 18th-ranked Arizona State visiting Saturday and 14th-ranked Oregon, UCLA and third-ranked Cal lined up on the schedule like so many 747s.

“Right now, our season can go either way,” senior safety Husain Abdullah said. “We can’t have any divisions on our team. We just have to come together.”

Which might be easier said than done.

With the next four opponents a combined 18-2, WSU can “take two different roads,” according to Brink. “I’m confident of which we are going to choose.”

Choice is good. But, in football, execution is better.