Washington State rewind: Season-long depth issues bite Cougars again in finale at Utah

The most peculiar Washington State football season in at least a half-century is in the rearview mirror following the Cougars’ third consecutive defeat, a 45-28 loss to Utah on Saturday at Rice-Eccles Stadium.

For Nick Rolovich and the Cougars, there should be more regularity, and ideally more rewards, in 2021 as the first-year coach gets a full offseason to install his offense, take stock of his roster and build the culture he’s talked about since being hired in January.

Many would contest there isn’t much to take away from the 2020 season, let alone each game within the season, but before we begin peering into 2021 we’ll take one more opportunity to analyze the Cougars this year with a rewind of Saturday’s game in Salt Lake City.

Numbers don’t lie

This would usually be referencing something notable on the box score, but this segment isn’t about passing yards, third-down conversion rate or time of possession.

It was anticipated that WSU wouldn’t be at full strength against Utah, especially when starting safety Ayden Hector announced on Instagram the day before the game he’d tested positive for COVID-19 and wouldn’t be playing. Although it wasn’t confirmed by the school, that probably meant other players would be placed in COVID-19 protocol for contact tracing.

After the game, though, Rolovich gave reporters a sense of how depleted his team actually was. At one point, the Cougars called a defensive timeout merely so one player could reenter the game after having his helmet knocked off. Normally, somebody else would step in for a play, but WSU didn’t have the bodies.

When defensive tackle Dallas Hobbs left the game with a first-quarter injury, it left junior college transfers Amir Mujahid and Antonio Pule as the only scholarship tackles left in WSU’s traveling party. Without Hector, Tyrese Ross and Chad Davis Jr., the Cougars were down to three scholarship safeties – Daniel Isom, Armuani Archie and Hunter Escorcia – for Saturday’s game.

“I don’t think we had anybody else to play,” Rolovich said. “These kids kept believing, kept fighting, the assistant coaches did a great job. I don’t think we had another D-tackle that could play, I’m not sure we could have another safety that could play. We had to take a timeout because of the helmet because we didn’t have anybody else.”

Rolovich later said the Cougars had 34 players unavailable for Saturday’s game and told media members “we got on the plane with 53 scholarship players.”

Fifty-three was the number the Pac-12 recommended teams have available, but WSU apparently met all the position group requirements, so Rolovich acknowledged his team would’ve played with 51 or 52 if necessary.

The unknowns and uncertainties of the season took a mental and emotional toll on players, who found out two of their games were canceled with less than 48 hours’ notice.

“Any opportunity to play is a blessing and it’s great. If I’m here saying no I wish we didn’t play, then why did I come here? I came here to play football,” oofensive tackle Abraham Lucas said. “Obviously I have my own opinions of it. I didn’t know what was going on most of the time. If it was a possibility, I just wish we could’ve known more. It was really a day-by-day thing.”

Halfway there

Throughout the short, four-game season, there were signs of a WSU team that has the potential to be resilient on defense and electric on offense. But seldom were the Cougars able to do be both at the same time, and far too often, they weren’t able to do either.

The Cougars pieced together some inspiring halves, outscoring Oregon 19-14 in the first half on Nov. 14, outscoring USC 7-3 in the second half on Nov. 6 and outscoring Utah 28-7 in the first half of Saturday’s contest in SLC.

But, for a team that finished 1-3 with three consecutive losses, the bad halves were more demoralizing than the good halves were encouraging, and the Cougars have eight months to reminisce on their worst of the season.

Utah outscored WSU 38-0 after halftime Saturday to turn what could’ve been a Cougar runaway into a blowout for the Utes. The second half on Saturday probably brought fans back to the second half of last year’s game against UCLA, when WSU squandered a 32-point lead to the Bruins after conceding 50 points in 30 minutes. Or, more recently, when USC sped out to a 35-6 first-half lead in Los Angeles less than a month ago. Likewise, when WSU took a halftime lead against Oregon, the Ducks hit back with a 29-point second half, and held the Cougars to 10.

“I don’t even really think it’s about protecting (the lead), necessarily,” Lucas said. “When you protect something, you’re really defensive and you don’t really attack. It’s more or less about playing with a high level of intensity and energy all throughout the entire game. Because if we had played the way we played in the first half, in the second half, we probably would’ve won. That just wasn’t the case. It was like a switch got flipped on their end, but on our end we decided to start taking stuff easy.”

Speaking of Lucas…

Over the next few weeks, a handful of WSU seniors will decide whether to stay in school and take advantage of the NCAA’s free year of eligibility, or skip out and move on to the next stage of their football career.

Lucas, a redshirt junior who’s never missed a start at right tackle, may be the only non-senior, along with running back Max Borghi, who’ll have to make that same decision.

When CBSSports.com put together a list of 2021 NFL draft prospects to watch in Week 14 of the college football season – the week the Cougars played at USC – Lucas’ name was listed before that of any Trojan.

“Washington State offensive tackle Abraham Lucas is regarded as a probable Day 3 selection at this time,” author Josh Edwards wrote. “He has a lot of athletic ability that would enable him to climb him in the rankings if he irons out a few technical flaws.”

If Lucas came back for a second junior season, he’d have the opportunity to climb up draft boards and participate in the Senior Bowl, which helped push former teammate and WSU left tackle Andre Dillard into the first round of the 2019 draft.

“I’m going to keep that private as much as I can, but I will make a decision for myself,” Lucas said.

Theo Lawson can be reached at (509) 939-5928 or theol@spokesman.com