Mike Leach is on his final leg as head coach at Washington State University. After three consecutive sub-par seasons on defense, he fired defensive coordinator Mike Breske and outside linebackers coach Paul Valero, replacing them with former Missouri safeties coach Alex Grinch and former Michigan cornerbacks coach Roy Manning. The combination of the two, who now fill three coaching spots on defense, are who Leach is turning over the deed to his house in Pullman and his future as the Cougs head coach.

It’s a gutsy call to make – the hiring heralded by almost every coach who took the time to comment. Missouri Head Coach Gary Pinkel knew just how good Grinch could be when he hired him back in 2012.

“He brings a lot to the table…,” Pinkel said in a press release on Jan. 5, 2012. “He’s worked hard to become a very successful teacher of the game.”

The praise from Pinkel, as well as a handful of others, is a nice touch. However, Grinch has never been a defensive coordinator in his short coaching career, and Leach doesn’t have the time to wait for him to develop into a solid Pac-12 coordinator.

Manning at least coached linebackers for one season at Michigan in 2013 and played the position in college, albeit a grand total of 10 starts in his final year in Ann Arbor. He bounced around the NFL for three years, playing for the Buffalo Bills, Cincinnati Bengals, Green Bay Packers, Houston Texans and Jacksonville Jaguars.

That will be a nice recruiting pitch for Manning, and that is the primary reason Leach hired him. But being an assistant on a recruit instead of being a primary recruiter, and recruiting to WSU instead of Michigan, is a different animal that he’s yet to experience, which makes the hiring all the more questionable.

Washington State needed a big name coach who had legitimate coaching experience to fast-track the revival of the Cougar defense. Leach failed. The Cougs’ defense has ranked in the bottom third of almost every statistical category over the last three years; 83rd in 2012, 103rd in 2013 and bringing things back a little bit this past season at 99th in total defense.

In Grinch’s three years as the safeties coach at Missouri, the Tigers ranked 76th, 109th and 40th respectively in total defense from 2012-2014. An average of 20 spots difference might seem like a lot through a glass-half-full perspective. It’s an improvement, but not enough for what the Cougars need to compete week in and week out in the Pac-12.

Grinch and Manning might be good coaches, but they don’t have the prowess to turn the table and make the Cougars defense a legitimate Pac-12 defense in one, two or even three years. They are both the type of coaches to bring in at the beginning of a head coaching tenure. They are relentless recruiters, and can lay the foundation early, build it up and, in a few years, be able to field a strong defense.

Leach had the opportunity to hire an experienced, well recognized defensive coordinator to revive the Cougars’ defense. But Leach decided to fold his hand, one he could have paired with two aces, and instead settled on the unproven prospects of Grinch and Manning. Come November, after another dismal season, Leach will have to fold his hand one more time, this time for good, as the head coach at WSU. He’ll look back at the decision to settle as the final straw in what has already been an underwhelming tenure on the Palouse.