Miracle season out the window

SEATTLE – All you really need to know about the Paul Wulff Era of Washington State football you could have learned from the first game.

And that’s this: He’s not a miracle worker.

Also this: If Cougars athletic director Jim Sterk had really wanted to do his latest hire a favor, he would have slithered out of the contract with Oklahoma State and scheduled Grambling for the Seattle game again this year.

Not the football team. Just the band.

Football coaches inevitably tell us three weeks into training camp that their players need to line up against someone other than teammates. This is an early chapter in the manual, entitled “The kids are ready to beat on somebody else.”

Except the Cougars weren’t – or at least didn’t look it.

Surely they didn’t need to play the Cowboys, who aren’t anything special by college football standards. But they were decidedly more special than the Cougars, who endured a fitful 39-13 beating in front of 50,830 at Qwest Field, making Wulff the first Wazzu coach to lose his first game since Jackie Sherrill 32 years ago.

But if the goal of winning wasn’t met, the Cougars met another.

They were philosophical about it.

“If you want to be successful, you can’t be afraid to fail,” said freshman offensive tackle Steven Ayers. “We aren’t pleased with the fact we failed, but we had times when we were successful.”

This is part of Wulff’s mission to make sure his young, undermanned and modestly gifted group doesn’t get down on one another – which is easier said in September than done in November. It’s an admirable aspiration, though frankly more candor of the kind that receiver Brandon Gibson displayed would have been appreciated, too.

“We were slow and dry and boring in the first half – let’s be real,” he said of Wazzu’s painfully nondescript start. “We’re used to putting the ball in the air and making big plays.”

As it was, the Cougars didn’t have a first down through the air until the game was almost three quarters old. All six of their first-half possessions ended in punts, except for the one that ended up with Dwight Tardy being tackled in his end zone for a safety.

This was, well, frightful.

Quarterback Gary Rogers waited patiently – for four years – and loyally for his chance to lead, but didn’t make anyone forget Alex Brink in one 82-yard afternoon. In fact, he may have made some of Brink’s large delegation of detractors whisper under its breath that all is forgiven – while the rest were rejoicing his release from the NFL’s Houston Texans, of course.

But half of Rogers’ incompletions were drops – by Gibson as well as the freshmen receivers being thrown to the fire.

“As Gary settled down a bit, you saw the offense start moving and there was a sense of rhythm,” said Wulff – who knew finding it would be an issue.

“We haven’t had great rhythm on offense. Just with the youth at receiver, we haven’t been extremely efficient even in practice so I kind of knew we weren’t going to do it in the game. The question was, were we ever going to be able to break out of it?”

Not until they’d spotted the Cowboys 18 points, which could have been more if not for some welcome saltiness by the WSU defense – and Okie State’s own issues.

“I’ll be real honest with you – we don’t have a big play list from inside the 20,” said OSU coach Mike Gundy, he of the I’m-a-grown-man rant of Youtube fame. “Every time I looked down at the call sheet we were inside the 20-yard line, which is good thing. But it’s just a little unusual to be down there that much.”

Well, it looks like the Cowboys won’t win the Big 12 title in graciousness, either.

The Cowboys were there so often because the Cougars’ kicking game was so abysmal – gee, now why does that sound familiar? Short, line-drive punts put Wazzu in the early hole, and lousy kickoff coverage cost it the momentum of its own first touchdown.

“Mistakes on special teams really get exposed,” Wulff said. “You make a mistake on offense or defense and a lot of times it isn’t necessarily a touchdown or a dramatic play. But a mistake or two on special teams can be very noticeable.”

But as we said, no miracles.

Wulff remembered showing up for work on the first day of spring football and having to teach some players how to get in the proper stance on special teams. Preparation time is finite. Likewise, a quarterback who was shamefully left to atrophy on the sidelines isn’t going to be up-to-speed in one game.

Too bad. There’s another this week.

But the 50K who made Qwest their destination Saturday didn’t necessarily show up with a sense of expectation, but only to find out if there was hope.

The Cougs, too.

“We didn’t expect everything to be crisp,” said safety Chima Nwachukwu, “but we expected to compete – and I felt we did that.

“There are 12 games left. It’s a long season. We’ll get better.”

True enough. If they don’t, it’ll be an even longer season.