Entering their second bye week of the season, the Cougs are 7-1, their best start since 2018. The road has not been easy and may have taken a few years off fans’ lives, but the road ahead presents an opportunity.
That opportunity is to win out. The remaining Cougar schedule features four opponents with a combined 10-22 record; none are over .500.
Before that stretch, however, WSU has a much-needed week of rest following the latest edition of what the future Pac-12 after dark would look like.
The Cougs are fresh off a heart-attack classic, winning 29-26 over San Diego State (3-4) in San Diego, California. The game featured everything, from fake punts to magic acts, but in the face of catastrophe, WSU pulled away.
“That’s why they give you 60 minutes. It’s the cardiac Cougs. There’s no quit in our football team. A lot of grit, a lot of heart, a lot of passion. That comes from within, that comes from the team,” head coach Jake Dickert said. “We’ve done it before, we did it again.”
The “Cardiac Cougs” first debuted in week three, defeating the University of Washington in Seattle, on a fourth-down goalline defensive stop. That effort was followed up by a Friday night 54-52 shootout against San Jose State, with WSU again prevailing.
The Cougs also pulled a 25-17 win from the jaws of defeat in Fresno, California, against Fresno State, again coming from behind to win. Safe to say it is a bit of a trend.
WSU was 1-4 in one-score games a season ago;this year the Cougs are 4-0. As the Cougar defense has adopted a “bend but don’t break” mentality, Dickert said, so has the rest of the team. That mentality was on full display in San Diego.
The Cougs had four offensive drives in the first half, two touchdowns, and two drives killed by failed fourth-down conversion attempts. They entered the game as 14.5-point favorites but led by just two at the half.
The third quarter was not pretty, with WSU being outscored 7-0 and trailing 19-14 going into the fourth, with SDSU knocking on the door again. For some reason, the third quarter has been a tough one this season for WSU, Dickert said.
“Tons of lulls this season in the third quarter, especially offensively. We did a lot of things that would have led to losing,” Dickert said.
The fourth quarter began with SDSU jumping out to a 26-14 lead, which would be the end of the Aztecs scoring. WSU exploded in the final 13 minutes, with quarterback Jon Mateer channeling his inner Lamar Jackson, and the defense locking in.
In the next drive, Mateer hit wide receiver Carlos Hernandez for a 34-yard touchdown. On the ensuing defensive drive, linebacker Buddah Al-Uqdah snagged a red zone interception to again set up Mateer. It is Al-Uqdah’s second in two weeks.
Mateer then led the game-winning drive, having to escape an air-tight seal of Aztec defenders bearing down on him in the backfield, scrambling for 18 yards, before eventually capping a gunslinging drive with a two-yard rushing QB sneak for a touchdown. The drive and the scramble were examples of Mateer’s talent, that no grass can deter.
“Before I snapped it, I saw there was grass on the top of the ball. Snap it, boom, grass just in my face. Have pressure, get out of it, that was pretty cool, and it just got us going,” Mateer said of his scramble.
Despite the drama, resulting in review and chain measurements, WSU pulled out the win. Going into a bye week, the Cougs are not just in a good place schedule-wise, but play-wise.
The team has no quit, and is never out of any game, Mateer said. Even down 26-14, he had no doubt.
“Going through my head was ‘We’ve done it before.’ I’ve done it in high school, we did it against San Jose State. Telling the guys that we believe in each other, we’ve done this before, we’ve practiced this, and they believe,” Mateer said.
Is it better to blow the doors off a team or to face tremendous adversity and prevail? Even though WSU was a heavy favorite against SDSU, the team’s mentality and belief are at a championship level.
On the field, the Cougs have promising talent to build on in the bye week. Al-Uqdah has an interception in back-to-back games, Mateer showed more promise, totaling 299 yards and four touchdowns with no turnovers and defensive tackle Ansel Din-Mbuh broke out, recording three sacks.
“This was by far, back-to-back games where Ansel Din-Mbuh was unblockable. That’s great to see, he’s accelerated his game,” Dickert said.
Din-Mbuh has 4.5 sacks in his last two games, after having no sacks or tackles for loss in his first 1.5 seasons. There is still work to do for consistency, but Din-Mbuh has put a season’s worth of sacks together in two weeks.
“These last couple of weeks the game has slowed down a lot,” Din-Mbuh said. “Taking care of your body, being professional with it, coming in early, getting treatment.”
The other key for WSU is that the fans showed up in Southern California.
“It was awesome, it felt like at times we had more fans than they did. Any time we have a chance to sing the school’s fight song in someone else’s stadium, that’s hard work,” Dickert said.
With a week to recoup from the madness, Coug fans can catch the team at home twice in the last four weeks, and in a feature road matchup in Corvallis, Oregon, vs Oregon State.
With the favorable schedule ahead, the Cougs going into the bye week ranked 22nd in the AP Poll and the team beginning to click even through adversity, things are set up nicely for the bye week.
Players who are banged up will have a chance to get healthier, including Cougar leading receiver Kyle Williams, who briefly exited the game vs SDSU, and others can get rested before locking back in.
In the Cougars first bye week, the focus was defensive communication, the following week, defensive back Tyson Durant said it was the best the defense had communicated all season. Entering the second bye week, the No. 22 “Cardiac Cougs” have a new focus.
“In the old Pac-12, we were always the hunter. We need to keep that hunter mentality,” Dickert said. “We are now the hunted.”
