WSU’s Jimmy Rogers made a solid choice at QB. It won’t matter without better offensive line play

PULLMAN – Now that Washington State has kicked off the Jimmy Rogers era, squeaking by with a one-score win over FCS Idaho on Saturday night, we can begin to wonder about the bigger decisions he’s already made.

The one that will hover near the top of fans’ minds: Rogers surprised nearly everyone and selected third-year sophomore Jaxon Potter as the Cougs’ QB1. In his first college start – just his second college game – Potter completed 23 of 30 passes for 208 yards and one touchdown, including leading his group on a game-winning drive, capped by kicker Jack Stevens’ go-ahead field goal in the final seconds.

It was a masterful drive, the kind that portends all manner of success for Potter and the Cougs, who covered nearly 60 yards in just 91 seconds. Imagine you’re Potter, starting in your first college game, and you’re asked to do that. Many other quarterbacks would have come up short.

But he wasn’t perfect. He sailed several important throws, and spent many drives trying to pull the Cougs’ offense out of the mud, all to no avail. In the third quarter, that prompted Rogers to pull him for transfer Julian Dugger, whose unit produced back-to-back three-and-outs. Part of that wasn’t his fault, as senior center Brock Dieu torpedoed one drive with a wild snap over Dugger’s head.

“I felt like we needed a spark,” Rogers said. “I felt like Julian’s legs might have been able to do that for us, and it didn’t.”

But that is also the point. It’s fair to wonder about the Cougs’ decisions at QB, but no matter who they start – Potter, Dugger or fifth-year senior Zevi Eckhaus, who would seem to be QB3 based on coaches’ substitution pattern – it won’t matter without better play from their offensive line. That group bore much of the blame for WSU’s running game struggles, which came out to 3 yards on 22 carries, hampering an offense that seemed intent on going run-first.

The Cougs’ front five is working to integrate three new starters, but even the group’s two trusted veterans were a bit off their game. Dieu was the team’s best run and pass blocker, according to Pro Football Focus, but he also made an uncharacteristic mistake that shuttered an entire drive. Right tackle Christian Hilborn, a fifth-year senior, turned in the group’s worst run-blocking grade, a figure of 57.7.

Hilborn has always been better in pass protection than run blocking, but he is now the veteran of a unit whose first priority is running the ball. New left guard Johnny Lester, a Northwest Christian School product, was only a tick better in run blocking grades: 58.5. During Saturday’s game, Cougar coaches correctly recognized that the Vandals were crashing the edges, forcing WSU to run the ball inside.

The hosts just didn’t have the physicality they needed. Never was that more noticeable than late in the fourth quarter, when running back Angel Johnson coughed up the fumble that allowed Idaho to tie the game at 10-10. He was stood up in the backfield by UI Matyus McClain, who surged past new left tackle Ashton Tripp like he wasn’t even there.

It would be one thing if the Cougars were only stuffed a few times in the backfield. That will happen on occasion, no matter who the opponent is. But for WSU on Saturday, it was less an exception and more the rule, following the hosts around at the worst times.

One of the costliest mistakes came shortly after Dieu’s bad snap, backing up the Cougars toward their own end zone. On a second-and-forever, WSU wanted to grind out a few yards to generate some breathing room – but Johnson was dragged down at the line of scrimmage because Hilborn didn’t block anybody.

Hilborn made a similar miscalculation in the second quarter. On a first down in the red zone, Potter took a shotgun snap and handed it to running back Kirby Vorhees. But he couldn’t get past the line of scrimmage because he was tackled by lineman Trevor Miller, who slid past Hilborn without much contact at all.

Here are the clips.

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The same kinds of errors plagued the Cougars at other costly times. On a third-and-2 in the first frame, WSU went to the ground again, this time with Vorhees, whose strengths come in these kinds of short-yardage situations. All told, he turned in a solid outing, including a key 11-yard scamper on his team’s final drive that helped set up Stevens’ game-winning boot.

But he was turned away on this play because the Cougars failed to block a pair of Vandals, including lineman Titus Ringor, who slipped by Lester without much of a move.

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Let’s be fair: Offensive line is not an easy position group to evaluate on tape. It’s not like watching a quarterback make an overthrow. Only coaches know exact assignments, which makes it tricky to determine who was out of place. WSU’s offensive line coaches, Taylor Lucas and Mike Iupati, could likely offer some clarity here.

But it’s hard to envision a situation where Lester is supposed to let his man glide right past him, just as it’s difficult to imagine why Hilborn wound up blocking nobody, as he did on that play near his team’s own end zone.

“Some of those plays, yeah, they just kept cutting the zone off and penetrating the line of scrimmage,” Rogers said. “We gotta do a better job of changing things up. They had a good tendency on us with some of the formations that we were in and what we were gonna do, and we gotta be able to adjust faster and combat it.”

It’s important to draw a few distinctions . The heart of the issue is what will determine if WSU can rebound next week against San Diego State and against opponents down the line. Are the Cougars getting pushed around on the interior, which would be a more fundamental problem? Or are they just out of place in their run-blocking schemes, which they could much more easily fix?

Against Idaho, WSU showed a bit of both, which makes answering those questions tough.

The good news for the Cougs’ offensive line is that they were much better in pass protection, giving Potter time in the pocket. When they did let him sit back and pass the ball, Potter looked excellent, especially on WSU’s first scoring drive of the game. It’s clear that could be a real strength of this offense.

The Cougars will have to become more credible run-blockers to keep that trend alive, though. And the games don’t get any easier from here on out.