After a week off and lots of change around the program, Washington State football hits the field again this Saturday against an Arizona State team who also had a bye last weekend. Let's dig in to what the Cougs have to do to get a win down in the desert.
WSU'S OFFENSE VS. ASU'S DEFENSE
I'm going to sound like a broken record here because I said this two weeks ago when WSU played Utah: I said it was going to come down to if WSU's offense could over power Utah's defense and, well, same situation applies here.
Even with the Cougs' 13 point performance against the Utes, they still lead the Pac-12 in points per game at 44.8 and rank 7th in the nation, while ASU's defense averages allowing 14.4 points per game. That ranks second in the conference and 11th in the country.
Translation: Something's got to give.
Thankfully for WSU and the Air Raid offense, ASU excels in stopping the run game. When it comes to passing yards allowed they rank 67th in the country and only have two interceptions this season.
Because of that, I'm going to give WSU the edge in that match up.
RED ZONE WOES
The main place the offense went wrong in the Utah game was in the red zone.
Yes, they had two field goals, but in Mike Leach's world field goals might as well be zero points. He, and Anthony Gordon alike, hate field goals.
If WSU scored touchdowns on their two drives that resulted in three points in the first half, they would've been tied at 21 heading into the half with Utah. The Cougs also had a drive in the second half that got to the Utah three-yard line that resulted in zero points. If they would've scored there, and had two touchdowns instead of field goals in the first half, the game would've been 31-28 with 9:14 in the 4th. That's a vastly different score than what the game ended up being.
Before the Utah game, WSU hadn't scored a touchdown while in the red zone only three times this season. So in one game they tied how many other times over the entire season they hadn't scored a TD while in the red zone.
NO YELLOW FLAGS
WSU ranks 115th in the country in penalties and penalty yards per game. Just to put this into perspective-- there are 130 teams in the FBS. Getting a bit more into the numbers, WSU is averaging 8.2 penalties per game for 74.2 yards.
The team has been saying all week that they are simplifying their defense and they also moved several players back to their more natural positions. I can't help but think one of the reasons why they are doing all of this is because if you make the defense easier and have guys more knowledgeable playing at their positions, the penalties should subside.
Obviously penalties are mostly defensive, but this goes for the offense as well as false starts have plagued the O line the past two games. Mike Leach called their false start struggles quote, "Pathetic" during his press conference on Monday.
GAME INFO
WSU at Arizona State kicks off at 12:30 on Pac-12 network this Saturday. The spread right now is 1.5 points so people think this one will be relatively close.
RELATED: Why is WSU's defense struggling?