Hope One: A Brand of Football
This is the first in what I intend to be a series leading up to the new football season. So, with that intention stated, lets get to the first of my hopes for the Cougs this fall.
Hope Number One: Branding
Let’s face it, we’re in purgatory. A luminal space between that which was, and that which will be. Ok, put less pretentiously: we’re living in our mom’s basement while we figure our stuff out. I remember doing exactly this for a while after graduating college, and the key to getting out of that basement was figuring out who I was. A bit of personal branding, if you will. You’ve gotta know what you’re selling before you can convince anyone else it’s worth a damn right? So my greatest hope for WSU football this fall is an identity. This has to happen on the field in order for anything our outstanding marketing department does to have any weight, and it has to happen quickly. Who are we? How do we play? What do we value?
Think about the great Bosie State teams, at their Coach Pete peak. They defined themselves with consistency and trickeration. First, they wouldn’t beat themselves, and then if needed they’d beat you with a Statue of Liberty play. The Pete Carrol USC teams had flash, both on the field and in Hollywood (I think Matt Leinart was the most famous ballroom dancing student in the world) but really they were going to beat the hell out of you in the simplest way possible. Line up in cover 3 and kick your butt. Run the ball on first down, and then do it again the next play (because Reggie Bush took the last one for 35 yards and it’s first down again).
Washington State needs an on-field identity. Even excluding all the off-field stuff; this program has been through an identity crisis. We were Air Raid Pirates for what felt like forever. Then we were going to be Run n Shoot gladiators.*
Then suddenly we were neither of those things.
Reflecting on it, perhaps the greatest testimony to Jake Dickert’s leadership skills is that despite that, we’ve had a fairly consistent product on the field. His defenses have run and tackled. His offenses haven’t been defined by mistakes. If I had to put a branding on it, I’d say we’ve been shooting for ‘Sound Football University’ and doing an okay job executing on that.
*I’m thinking more American Gladiator than Ridely Scott’s Gladiator here.
But let’s be honest, ‘Sound Football U” isn’t exactly a brand. It’s a bowl of oatmeal. Pete Carrol also coached ‘Sound Football’, but he also ensured his teams had something consistently special about their style of play. Even if deep down his favorite play was a well-executed, field flipping punt.
I think Coach Dickert knows this! Which is why, when given the keys to the whole shebang, he brought back an air raid style offense and brought in Cam Ward. When he immediately lost his new air raid OC a year later, he brought in one of the youngest and 4-vertyist offensive coordinators in the country to take his place.
Jake Dickert seems to wants an explosive, creative, consistent offense. He wants his defense and special teams to play sound football, and he obviously wants his offense to play that as well, but in his choice of offensive coordinators Dickert has aimed to give Cougar football a little zhuzh.
These last two seasons, that extra bit of something was Cam Ward. Passes thrown by the quarterback seemed only to speed up as they traveled through the air, never to slow down. His penchant for Russell Wilson/Ben Roethlisberger scrambling (avoid being tackled long enough to huck it deep) was showstopping at times. He was without question a fun and talented player to root for.
But much like Russell Wilson, at other times the hero ball was closer to Jordan Poole than Kobe Bryant. Which, combined with the reality of the offensive line play and wide receiver talent, meant that Ward had to play hero ball far too often for his talent to become the trademark flash of a great football team.
Beyond that it seemed that Ward’s talents and new offensive coordinator Ben Arbuckle’s offensive vision clashed. Not much, as both sides thrived on throwing the rock, but enough. Ward is not a running quarterback. Nonetheless Arbuckle consistently asked him to play like Cam Newton in key moments. Dialing up QB runs that often equipped Ward and the WSU offense with numerical and positional advantages, but as often as not: failed to win when it mattered most. It turned out that asking Cam Ward to execute off tackle run plays just wasn’t a road to a winning identity for a team.
But now Ward is a resident of Coral Gables, and the QB job seems to be John Mateer’s to lose heading into fall camp. Mateer showed off his skills as a runner and a passer in the spring scrimmage and seems a bit more equipped to embody an offensive vision that hucks it deep and runs the quarterback when it counts.
So, can this all come together? Can the Cougs field a defense that is aggressive but defined by sound football and solid tackling? A special team that helps more than it hurts, and an offense that puts it all together and gives the Cougs that elusive but irreplaceable identity?
Can 2024 be the year we don’t just have good football on the Palouse, but establish a brand of football that lasts years? I sincerely hope so. What do you think?