WSU ready to kick off new season, new era with home matchup against nearby Idaho

PULLMAN – Jimmy Rogers may only be in his third year as a head coach, but he has coached hundreds of games. For a decade and a half, he’s jogged out of the tunnel, heard fans roar, slung on the headset and gotten ready to call a game.

For almost the entirety of his career, he did so more than 1,000 miles away, where he helped build South Dakota State into an FCS empire. When he does so on Saturday, he’ll be wearing different colors. Coaching new players. Walking out of a new tunnel.

It’s a lot of new for Rogers, the new head coach at Washington State, which opens the new season – the new era – with a home matchup against nearby Idaho at 7 p.m. Saturday.

“For me, it’s just a new environment,” said Rogers, whose WSU team is hosting Idaho for the first time in three years. “As far as the preparation and the thoughts going into a game, I don’t think that will ever change, regardless of the spike of a game.”

In short, business is business for Rogers and the Cougars, who are favored by about 13.5 points to top the Vandals, who will enter ranked No. 12 in the FCS preseason top 25. Rogers will also be matching wits with another first-year head coach, UI’s Thomas Ford, who accepted the job last winter.

In its second and final year operating outside of a traditional conference schedule, WSU enters with tons of question marks. The biggest ones come at the quarterback position, where the Cougars have not named a starter. Veteran returner Zevi Eckhaus is the likely favorite to have won a four-way QB competition, which also featured fellow returner Jaxon Potter and dual-threat transfers Julian Dugger and Ajani Sheppard.

Coaches have named a starter internally, Rogers said earlier this week, but he is declining to make that information public. As with WSU’s Week 1 depth chart, which features an “OR” designation at every position, coaches are keeping things quiet to protect competitive advantages. So if they have their way, everyone outside the team will find out the starting quarterback at the same time: When they jog out for the season’s first snap.

“The reality is, it’s always gonna be ‘or’ at every position if you don’t come out and produce,” Rogers said. “It’s ‘or’ the next guy needs to be ready. Certain spots, I mean, it’s pretty clear on who has been running with the top group so far. But at the same time, it’s Week 1. There’s a lot of transition. There’s a lot of transition on their end, and we’ll see if that depth chart holds true. A lot of ours will.”

Outside of the quarterback spot, many of the Cougs who will make or break their success this fall came from Brookings, where 16 former SDSU players committed to WSU and another 13 class of 2025 prospects flipped their commitments. Some are shoo-ins for starting roles as Cougars, including running back Angel Johnson and safety Tucker Large, while younger ones are projected to make impacts in years to come.

Against Idaho QB Joshua Wood, a transfer from Fresno State, the Cougs’ revamped secondary will likely figure prominently into Saturday’s game. At the safety spots, Large will be joined by fellow veterans Matt Durrance and Cale Reeder, all three of whom have played together for at least four years. After forgettable seasons by WSU safeties in recent years, this trio projects to turn a weakness into a real strength, perhaps the most formidable on the team’s defense.

Wood, a dual-threat quarterback whose only meaningful college action came last winter in Fresno State’s bowl game loss to Northern Illinois, gets the challenge of facing several other seasoned WSU defenders. The Cougs’ starting SAM linebacker is fifth-year senior Caleb Francl, another transfer from SDSU, whose speed makes him a real weapon – especially against a mobile quarterback like Wood.

“I think he’s got a really good arm. He’s an elite mover,” Rogers said. “He does really well moving out of the pocket. … He’s a dynamic playmaker. We need to make sure that we handle our end on defense, and make sure that we do our best to change things up and make it harder on him.”

What kind of pace will Saturday’s game follow? That much may depend on the Cougs’ offense, which will be squaring off against a largely inexperienced Vandal defense. Three of the visitors’ starting secondary players have never started a college game, including true freshman Caleb Ricks. The exception is veteran cornerback Jhamell Blenman, who started his career at WSU before playing junior college ball, then transferred to Idaho.

Regardless of the quarterback, the Cougs’ offense figures to rely on the run in a big way, perhaps more than ever before in program history. The days of the Air Raid are likely over in Pullman, at least under this coaching staff’s watch. The jury is still out on whether that’s a good or bad thing, but a verdict will start to surface on Saturday evening.