COUGAR SPORTS WEEKLY

Defending modern college football offenses requires an ability to provide multiple looks in order to match their opponents’ ability to attack them in multiple ways. Flexibility is key, so simply labeling WSU’s defense a “3-4″ doesn’t do it justice — most especially because it doesn’t really seem to function like a true 3-4.

One of the keys to Breske’s defense is the “Buck” position — Long’s new spot. It’s a hybrid defensive end/outside linebacker position that requires the player to be equally adept rushing the passer dropping into coverage. I wanted to see how Breske is planning on using Long in this new capacity, so I went back and watched the spring game again, charting all of Long’s snaps — which side he lined up on, whether he was up or down in a three- or four-point stance, and whether he rushed the QB or dropped back. I did the same with his backup, Logan Mayes.

The more I watched, the more questions I had as I tried to understand what was going on conceptually. The questions led me to do a fair amount of research on the internet, which led me to more questions, which led me to watch the spring game for a third time. While I’ll readily admit, as usual, that I’m no coach and that it’s tough to know exactly what was intended on each play given the limited camera angles available to the layperson, I think I now have a pretty good idea what Breske’s scheme is trying to accomplish in the front seven and the role that Long and Mayes play in that.

First, let’s take a look at how Long and Mayes were used in the spring game. Here are a few easy-to-grasp charts that summarize the data. There were 50 total snaps that I was able to chart (fuzzy camerawork and the early end of the online feed conspired to keep me from charting any more).

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I compare Mike Leach’s apparent philosophy about the importance of special teams to Moneyball:

Leach clearly isn’t viewing special teams as an afterthought. He devoted a significant amount of money to hire one of the nation’s top special teams coaches, Eric Russell, away from Tennessee. And a number of other assistant coaches — notably Jeff Choate, who was Boise State’s special teams coordinator before being hired to coach the linebackers here — have deep special teams ties.

The question, then, is why? What does Leach think he sees that so many other coaches seem to miss?

This is why I used the term “Moneyball” above. If you’re familiar with Moneyball by Michael Lewis — or the movie starring Brad Pitt, which I unfortunately have not seen — you know that it centers around the statistical revolution in baseball. However, many people end up missing the big point. Moneyball was never about on-base percentage as some magical metric; it was about looking for things that actually help you win games that the competition seems to be overlooking.

There’s a good chance that’s exactly what Leach is hoping to make WSU’s special teams into.

We take a look at what Mike Leach has to say about evaluating quarterbacks in his book, “Swing Your Sword,” and apply his standards to Jeff Tuel and Connor Halliday:

Says Leach, “It’s very difficult to gauge a quarterback’s intelligence from recruiting tape, but I know that guys who throw into double coverage aren’t making good decisions. What I want to see is him throwing to his receivers right on the break, or just as they find themselves wide open.”

Substitute “recruiting tape” with “watching as a fan on TV” and you’ve got our position. All we can do is apply the same two standards Leach does when he watches quarterback prospects: Is he throwing to guys who are open and is he throwing it to them as they come open?

In terms of the latter, I see this as another push between the two of them. But with regards to the former, I think this is an area where Tuel has a bit of an advantage at the moment. Among the seven full-time starters in the Pac-10 in 2010, Tuel had the lowest attempt-to-interception ratio. This jives with what I saw with my eyes, and I think part of it is due to Tuel’s ability to tuck the ball and run rather than force the ball when nobody is open.

Halliday, on the other hand, has a bit of a gunslinger mentality. Sometimes he gets away with it and throws for 500 yards. Sometimes he throws four interceptions in the first half, as he did against a Utah team that actually was prepared for him and his skill set.

Who finishes spring with the edge at QB?
Might as well get the biggest question out of the way first. The battle between Jeff Tuel and Connor Halliday figures to dominate most of the headlines this spring. The quarterback is the most important player for any offense, but that’s true to an extreme in Leach’s pass-happy Air Raid.
 
Who’s the favorite? I think logic would point in the direction of Tuel, simply because of his experience. We also don’t yet know how healthy Halliday is after suffering that season-ending lacerated liver against Utah, but given the timeline presented shortly after the injury occurred, it’s hard to imagine him being a 100 percent today. We’ll know more about that shortly.
 
I will say this, though: I think it’s going to be tough for most casual observers of practice to know who’s getting the leg up just by watching. Leach needs his quarterback to be a coach on the field, and it can be tough to know where the ball was supposed to end up. Mere completion percentage isn’t going to tell the whole story. Given how coy Leach likes to be with these sorts of things, don’t expect him to tip his hand too much over the next four weeks. Besides, he doesn’t plan on naming a starter until fall.
 
Still, that won’t stop us from reading the tea leaves.

Why they missed 14 of their 20 free throws in the second half, I have no clue. But I do know this: That’s a good free throw shooting team that, for whatever reason, had a bad day. And that bad day just shouldn’t overshadow all the good things that happened in the game.

This is where it becomes necessary to separate process from results. The loss sucks, no doubt. But the Cougars have been putting together performances such as this with increasing frequency — holding their own on the glass, getting to the free throw line with regularity. Beyond that, a hugely overlooked aspect of this game is that WSU held Washington to it’s second-lowest offensive output of the season, just 0.87 points per possession.

In fact, if we play a little what if, we can see just how much is going right for these guys. What if the Cougars simply hit their 32 free throws attmepts at their season rate of 72 percent? They make six more free throws and score 61 points, ostensibly enough to win. If they hit their second half free throws at their normal rate, they score eight more points. Heck, how about if they just shoot their threes at their normal rate 36.5 percent instead of 11 percent, hitting four or five more, as they normally would? Blowout city.

I realize this kind of analysis sometimes rubs people the wrong way, because, you know, the Huskies could have played better, too, and the bottom line is that the team lost. But you do yourself a disservice if you don’t recognize that all the ingredients were there for a win. It just didn’t happen.

Here’s an excerpt from Thursday’s newsletter, in which I identify five guys from this class whose names you’ll want to remember both this fall and down the line. This is the first guy, who is somewhat obvious, but the quintet also includes a dark horse guy who might surprise you:

Gabe Marks, WR (5-foot-11, 175 pounds)
Cougar fans like to think WSU is already pretty deep and talented at receiver, but they’re just not as deep and talented as most people think, never mind the fact that Leach will play a ton of receivers and there aren’t enough currently on the roster. Beyond that, he is looking for guys with very specific abilities to play in his offense, and the fact that he signed four guys who profile as inside receivers in his system speaks volumes about whether he thinks there already are guys on the roster who can do what he wants in there.

Marks is the most heralded of the four wide receiver recruits Mike Leach brought in, rated four stars by both Scout and Rivals. He was WSU’s only recruit in the Rivals 100, rated No. 87 overall by the service, and decommitted from SMU to join WSU. Marks has speed to burn, as evidenced from the way he runs away from defenders in a Southern California league that’s got plenty of speedy defenders. He moves in and out of cuts without losing any speed, an essential skill for any Leach inside receiver, and it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if Marks is earning snaps from day one. If not — after all, Leach demands a high level of execution on offense, and it will be tough to develop that in fall camp — he still projects as a guy who will eventually excel in this Air Raid offense.

At the halfway point of the basketball season, the standings suggest the Cougs are just a game or two away from being in the upper half of the conference — sitting at 3-6, they’re just two behind fifth place Arizona, UCLA and Stanford. Darn you, losses to Utah and Arizona State!

However, there’s a growing pile of evidence to suggest that those two losses actually were an accurate reflection of this team’s level of play and not some kind of fluke occurrence. Are ASU and Utah better than WSU on a neutral floor? Probably not. But on the road … yeah, WSU isn’t enough better to overcome that against even the worst teams in the conference.

To what do I owe this conclusion? An analysis of the efficiency margin of each team in the conference in today’s Cougar Sports Weekly, something that does not flatter WSU. After some analysis of why the defense is so bad, it led me to an outside-the-box conclusion:

The question then becomes whether it’s reasonable to expect the defense to improve much over the rest of the season. Honestly, I’m not sure. If coaching really is part of this, then Bone could just decide to go crazy emphasizing defense. He also could make some personnel tweaks, giving more minutes to guys such as DJ Shelton and Dexter Kernich-Drew. Shelton screws up — a lot — in terms of being where he’s supposed to be, but he’s tall and athletic and does alter shots. And Kernich-Drew is long and active.

However, instead of focusing on the defense — really, how much defense can you teach in a short amount of time? — I wonder if the best solution might not just be to go with extra offense. I’m thinking, in particular, of drastically reducing the role of Marcus Capers, whose value as a defender is probably overstated by most fans anyway.

If the defense is horrible with him in there for 30 minutes a night, and he’s not giving you anything offensively, why not replace him with someone who could potentially at least score? How much worse can the defense get, really?

Here’s a short excerpt from this morning’s Cougar Sports Weekly, in which I spent about 1,200 words examining WSU’s new defensive coordinator Mike Breske. I spent some time talking with the beat reporter who covers Montana football for the Missoulian to get some first-hand knowledge of Breske’s tendencies, as well as dug into some of the advanced statistics from his time as defensive coordinator at Wyoming.

One thing Neighbor said Breske always relished was the opportunity to draw up a blitz the opponent had never seen before, something he tried to do each week. One of his more creative moves this past year was a cornerback blitz. If that doesn’t seem creative, consider this: Montana All-American CB Trumaine Johnson was so good, opponents almost never threw his way. After a month of that, Breske decided to start to use Johnson as a blitzer, figuring teams wouldn’t design plays to that side, anyway. The result was a safety against Montana State and another near safety later on.

When Oregon fans are saying they had no reason to expect what happened last night, you should believe them — this was as out of the blue for them as it was for us. Of course WSU did a lot of things wrong, but Oregon did something to the Cougars that they weren’t able to even come close to doing against the three previous terrible opponents they played. The Ducks, shooting 36 percent from three coming in, hit 9-of-16 out there for nearly 60 percent. A number of teams, including Oregon, probably would have trouble replicating that against air.

The other thing that I think is getting lost is that the offense, while not spectacular, was good enough to produce a victory on most nights. The Cougars scored at a 1.07 points per possession clip, and that’s a rate they maintained pretty much the whole night — it really wasn’t the product of garbage time points. If WSU does that every night (which they won’t, but I’m trying to make a point here that offense was fine last night), they’re going to win more games than they lose the rest of the way.

Now that I’ve hopefully talked you down off the ledge a little bit, here are a few things that I do think you can take away from this game.