Consistency, finishing drives and taking responsibility. Those are the areas football Head Coach Mike Leach and his team said need to improve if they want to turn their so far dreary season around.

 Redshirt junior Joe Dahl, junior Jeremiah Allison, and redshirt freshman Jamal Morrow joined Leach at yesterday’s press conference and the message from of all of them was the same.

 “Consistency and finishing,” Morrow said. “We need to be more consistent on offense and finish these games.”

  Statistically, the offense has struggled with consistency so far, racking up 38 points against Rutgers in the first game of the season but only managing to produce one touchdown in a 13-point performance against Nevada. Allison said Leach had some positive insight into the team’s early season inconsistencies.

“One thing Coach Leach mentioned is that if we could get the Rutgers offense and the Nevada defense we would be a very, very good team.” Allison said.

 Allison also spoke about defensive line coach Joe Salave’a and how he addressed his unit.

“He actually looked at himself in the mirror and took responsibility for his actions in preparing us,” Allison said. “He basically feels that we have to create the mindset and that atmosphere that we’re not going to lose and we’re going to continue to scratch, claw and will our way to a win.”

Leach assured the media that just because the coaching staff needs to work on changing the mindset of the program doesn’t mean that anybody is getting “off the hook” for the team’s 0-2 start. Developing a true team leader is one of the main things Leach said is holding the team back from delivering on a consistent basis.

“We have some guys that are older than others but we’re still developing team leadership,” Leach said. “We don’t have one guy that I think, ‘Alright, this is a team leader,’ and part of that is that they’re in uncharted territory. That’s because there’s no man on the team who’s won in college football, we’re the ones that have to change that.”

 As usual, the team’s mindset heading into their matchup with Portland State on Saturday is to just win their one game this week and then go from there. The players said that playing in front of their fans in Pullman for the first time this season will be a welcome change, but nobody claimed the Cougs would be overlooking their FCS opponent.

“We all know that Big Sky teams are capable of winning every game that they play,” Dahl said. “We’re all aware that they have the ability to beat us so we have to prepare like we would for any other team. We need to give it our best effort.”

 The Cougars said they are taking their motto of ‘respect everyone, fear no one’ into the week, especially after seeing PSU’s conference foe Eastern Washington take Washington down to the wire in a 59-52 shootout in Montlake, Saturday.

Coach Leach also addressed the prospect of redshirting junior receiver Gabe Marks, who had surgery during the off-season. Leach said the team wants to redshirt Marks if they can, citing an abundance of depth at the receiver position this season and Marks’ minimal workload in the off-season as the main reasons for the move.

The Cougars will host the Portland State Vikings this Saturday at 5 p.m. The game will be televised on the Pac-12 Networks.