The Good, Bad and Ugly of WSU’s win over Utah State

WSU didn’t mess around for long

Dateline: The confluence of the Amazon and Rio Negro, where the heat is extra hot, the humidity is extra humid, and there’s a constant battle between malaria and syphilis atop the “things I’d really like to avoid” power rankings. Regardless, I might just, uh, stay here for the long term. Well, one term anyway. Plus the beer is cheap.

Your Washington State Cougars continued their home/road sine curve on Saturday, coasting to a rather drama-free 49-28 win over future conference-mate Utah State on Saturday night, improving their record to 8-1 and AP ranking to #19 in the process/aftermath. Pretty good! Wait, sine curve? What the hell is he talking about? Well, WSU has coasted to rather easy victories in its last two home games, but has struggled a lot more on the road against mediocre-to-bad teams.

/peaks at upcoming schedule and sees two straight on the road against bad teams

Gulp.

Moving right along.

There was a lot of “good” on Saturday night, as well as some bad and ugly, so let’s dive in.

The Good

• VPNs! I am a paid subscriber to YouTube TV, so it’s dumb that I can’t watch YouTube TV when I’m out of the country for a couple weeks. Really, really dumb. Thankfully my current VPN got around the Great Wall of Proxy Server Sniffers, and I was able to catch most of the game on the old laptop.but then bad internet. because of course.
• I guess it was good that this game was on really late, because the Brazilians were still bouncing to the ear-splitting house music well past two in the morning, so at least I wasn’t trying to sleep?
• Three drives, three touchdowns to open the game on the WSU side. Hard to lose games when you open that well.
• Welcome back, the Wayshawn we saw earlier in the season! It looked like the idle week really helped Parker heal up, as he was his old explosive self, piling up 149 yards on just 11 carries, including runs of 11, 12, 29 and 75 yards.
• 303 total rushing yards, and 6.7 YPC.

• It’s a good thing that Utah State DB’s hands failed him on Mateer’s very, very risky throw or that would have gone the other way for a score. However, that was some great concentration by Carlos Hernandez to snag the pass and turn what should have been a turnover into an explosive play for the Cougs.
• Cooper Mathers is once again Cris Carter. All he does is catch touchdowns! He was a whisker from catching two of them on a double pass.
• Speaking of touchdowns, Kyle Williams scoring three on just five catches seems rather effective.
• Fortunately for Coug fans, Kyle Williams is a stud, because that first touchdown was not executed well. Thankfully, Williams shedded an unblocked defender and scored.
• On one of those touchdowns, Mateer showed some solid discipline, standing in the face of pressure (after Brock Dieu got beaten badly) and waiting until Kyle Williams got open in the corner. Great play.
• Underrated aspect of football – actually fielding a punt before it rolls 25 yards. Guys who don’t do that drive me bonkers, so Tony Freeman, thank you.
• It’s sure good that WSU was bailed out of a few situations by Utah State’s abject awfulness, such as that Mateer throw, the Mateer fumble that became a Yackety Sax routine when the USU player intentionally batted the ball out of the end zone, Utah State’s crippling penalties etc. etc.
• Heckuva tough run by Mateer to get the ball across the goal line. Please be careful when you reach the ball out like that, John!
• Leo Pulalasi must be studying Wayshawn Parker a bit, because he showed off a couple deft open-field moves. I have not seen that before!
• Hang on, there’s a Trivial Pursuit gameshow? On actual television? WHY AM I JUST LEARNING ABOUT THIS??!! Ok, it’s because I never watch the CW, but still.
• Congrats to David Gusta on collecting his first career sack. Wait, his first sack? I would have lost a bet on that, because Gusta has been pretty disruptive in spots this season.
• What a great Al-Uqdah play on fourth down, stripping the ball away and turning a Utah State first down into WSU’s ball.

The Bad

• I thought I had a solid hack for enduring halftime – which came about 140 a.m. – when I decided to do a Peleton workout to pass the time (Taylor Swift ‘Midnights’ 20-minute core workout FTW), right up until I hit “Done” and picked up the laptop as Parker was taking his 75-yard house call across the goal line. Dammit.
• The surprise onside kick recovery was supposed to be in the “Good” category (except for the part where the players were pointing the wrong way) until the refs took it away, despite nincompoop expert Michael Mothershed siding with the ruling on the field. As soon as he did that, I knew WSU was doomed.
• I had no idea Spencer Petras plays for Utah State. When did this happen? And he’s thrown 15 touchdowns? Going 360 yards or better three times? Are we sure this is the same guy who couldn’t hit water from the side of the canoe at Iowa? Despite the solid stats of late, I saw a lot of the Petras I was used to, particularly plays like when he badly underthrew a receiver who was wide open after torching Jackson Lataimua on a “go” route.
• Ted Robinson correctly termed Kyle Williams’ carry in the second quarter was an “end around.” Then Ryan Leaf incorrectly called it a reverse. This reminds me of people who incorrectly call a “hook and lateral” a “hook and ladder.” Yes, I recognize the “old man yells at cloud” energy of this comment but I don’t care. It has to be said!
• Thankfully, replay got the Al-Uqdah forced fumble call correct. Unfortunately, they totally missed a late hit and probable targeting helmet shot on Parker, as well as a Utah State defender launching himself and hitting Hutson in the face with the crown of his helmet. As always, nobody knows what Targeting is.
• I think the ump cam is pretty cool, right up until it pans to the empty seats all over the stadium.
• Let’s never compare Spencer Petras to Jared Goff. Never ever. I don’t care that they went to the same high school.
• So we’re back to missing kicks, eh Dean? Can we not be back to that any more?
• There are several instances when WSU DBs, particularly the safeties and nickels, are just clueless with the ball in the air.
• Nine games into the season and we still don’t have a left guard. Super.

The Ugly

• This is easily the latest yours truly has published this here column. There are reasons, but not excuses. Hopefully nobody docks my $0 of pay.
• I know it was garbage time, and I know there were backups in. But for God’s sake, Cougs, you shouldn’t be letting some slappy take a handoff and go 72 yards for a score ON THE FIRST CARRY OF HIS LIFE IN FBS FOOTBALL!!!
• Despite being blatantly obvious in real time, and despite several obvious reviews, Ted Robinson could not tell that the Utah State player intentionally batted Mateer’s fumble out of the end zone. I couldn’t believe it.
• Although game didn’t start until after 1130 p.m. where I am, I missed the first few possessions because I was working. That meant that I missed the CW nonsense, and didn’t know about it. Then my brother sent me this the next day:

“CW in a nutshell – Let’s continue coverage of a stupid NASCAR race that’s already over so we can listen to some redneck talk about his victory that nobody cares about. Then the coverage ends and let’s show 3 ****ing commercials about our upcoming game between Utah State and WSU, which is actually in ****ing progress while we show you these commercials.”

Good job, good effort, TV people.

All that aside, the Cougs are 8-1 (!!!) and will almost certainly move up into the CFP Committee’s Top 20 on Tuesday. It doesn’t mean much since there’s still a month to go, but it’s still cool! And always will be!

Highlights!

These highlights show some curious stuff. Like, is it really a highlight when WSU catches a six yard pass on 3rd-and-9? Or kick returns that barely get to the 20? Oh well, they’re still a fun watch overall.

Interviews!

This Week in Parenting

I mentioned a while back that the boys had decided to cook their own lunch on Sunday nights, making enough for most/all of the week. Well, things came to a head around 7:30 p.m. one Sunday night when this was the scene (one kid grilling flank steak and the other mixing a pot pie recipe) as Mrs. Kendall was trying to get dinner on the table.

That was the end of that, Mrs. Kendall declared, so now we have guidelines in place that mandate the meals be prepared before Sunday evening. I haven’t been home in over a week, but I suspect that we’re at least halfway back to peanut butter and jelly on the regular.

Later in the week, we seemingly had every teenager in a 10-block radius pass through the house to slake all of our soft drinks and murder every piece of pizza in the house while I sat in the driveway, drank beer and asked fake trivia questions to trick-or-treaters. Meanwhile, the 16 year-old had plans to trick-or-treat (I don’t know why) but no plan for a costume, despite my badgering beforehand, so he did what every other kid in the Florida Panhandle does at this time of year.

Yup, if I had a nickel for every southern kid who donned the Steve Largent jersey and throwback Seahawks helmet, I’d be five cents richer.

Throughout the week, the youngest had been trying to lay the groundwork for convincing us to let him skip school Friday, as if Halloween was Mardi Gras or something. “Nobody is gonna be in school!!!”, to which I’d reply, “Well I know one person who is gonna be there.” His efforts as of Thursday evening bedtime had been unsuccessful. Friday morning, he took one last shot, appearing in our bedroom and saying, “Ok, please just hear me out.” We did not, in fact, hear him out. You’ll be stunned to learn that he survived the day, though I’m sure it felt like he’d endured the Bataan Death March through his classes. Poor kid.

On the fall sports scene, the mighty Dolphins had their final game of the season the day after Halloween. Mrs. Kendall and I arrived a bit late due to some parking lot buffoonery, and the score was 8-7. Wait a minute, we’re actually in the game? It was actually close for a bit until the opponent decided to just keep giving the ball to its gigantic running back, who bowled through the Dolphin defense time after time enroute to a 50-25 Dolphin loss. And that was that.

When the kiddo got home, he asked if we saw the play where he got in. WHAT??!! NO! Turns out one of the kids on the PAT team didn’t go in for the first kick (aside – it’s the last game of the season and we still can’t figure out who’s on the special teams. Tremendous), so our guy ran in as the 11th player. When the snap came, he basically just tossed a rusher to the side (we only saw this on video). Pretty cool! Good thing he barely got to play!

As for the Argos, I got to see one last game where they got a last-play win in which the 13 year-old caught a couple touchdown passes, batted a pass down on defense, and snagged a crucial fourth down pass on the game-winning drive. All of that resulted in a player-of-the-game award, which was pretty great for me since I won’t get to see any more games. The next week brought some heartbreak, however. He was too sick to play Tuesday, and they lost in overtime on Thursday. Hopefully the playoffs bring better results.

I mentioned that the 13 year-old missed a game due to illness, having caught strep throat for like the ninetieth time this year. Both he and the oldest were home from school on Tuesday as a result, and I had to run out to get them their prescribed antibiotics. While I was out, I got a note from the youngest.

I got them the milkshakes, mostly out of guilt since I was leaving the country later in the day. #sucker

Tales From the Road

Scenes from a Brazilian elevator:

Uhh, you mean there’s a chance that when the elevator door opens that I’ll step straight to my death? Feels like I shouldn’t have to worry about that! But wait…

Elevator apartheid is not something I expected to encounter on this, or any trip. What’s that? You have Type 2 diabetes? FIND ANOTHER ELEVATOR, BUDDY!

Take it away, Mr. Lombardi.

I wish I knew, Vince. I wish I knew.