Loss at Stanford Shows Washington State Must Find Ground Threat to Succeed

As great and eccentric as Washington State head football coach Mike Leach is, the one cruel truth about the Cougars in 2014 is that his team will not be any kind of threat in the Pac-12 without a more balanced offense. The bad news for Washington State fans is, with Leach at the helm, such a balance offensively is never going to occur.

In back-to-back weeks now the Cougars have had chances to pull off conference wins. Last week, quarterback Connor Halliday threw for 734 yards, yet Washington State still managed to lose to California, 60-59. Halliday threw it 70 times in that game and the Cougars ran it only 25. The eye-popping passing stats were a conversation point for fans all over the country, but the harsh reality was that the result left WSU 2-4 overall and 1-2 in the Pac-12.

Fast forward to Friday night, where Washington State played very tough at No. 25 Stanford, before falling, 34-17, in a game that was much closer than that most of the way. The pass-run imbalance was even more pronounced. Against the Cardinal, the Cougars passed on 71 of 81 plays — there were only six called runs. The other four were sacks. While you could argue that many of the shorter passes were like runs, the bottom line is that Washington State’s offense exposes their quarterback to more hits, allows defenses to forget about even needing to defend the run, and puts pressure on the offense to succeed because a 3-and-out with three incompletions might put the WSU defense back on the field after just a 20-second rest. Another issue is that when the offense doesn’t work, it loses yardage in chunks due to sacks. If a running play doesn’t work, it might go for a yard.

The formula Leach has brought to Washington State hasn’t clicked yet, even if it is fun to watch. Halliday is clearly excelling in the system given his numbers, including more than 3,300 yards passing and 28 touchdowns in seven games. But it isn’t leading to team success. Throwing the ball around on every play and not trying to throw defenses off by running at least 30 or 35 percent of the time or so is putting the Cougars (2-5, 1-3) into a position of being just good enough to lose despite decent efforts against teams like Oregon and Stanford. And in the case of Stanford (4-2, 2-1), the Cardinal defense is simply too good to be beaten by a one-dimensional offense. Halliday threw for just 303 yards tonight on 44-of-71 passing.

Leach won’t like the idea, and the fact is he won’t even implement it. But as entertaining as Washington State can be to watch when they are throwing 60 or 70 times a game, the actual amount of success that will go with that is far short of what was probably expected by Washington State when it hired Leach.

Ed Morgans is an ACC Basketball Writer for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @writered21 and add him to your network on Google.