Cougs, Cougs, Cougs…
I’ll be honest, I’m a little hung over this morning after that fiasco of a game last night in the Rose Bowl. Cougs lose 28-25 to the Bruins. Cougs should have won 42-25 or “could” have won 42-25, but they didn’t.
The only positive thing I can say about that one is that at least the Cougs covered the spread by half a point. Normally that makes me feel a little bit better, but it didn’t last night because I really felt like we should have won. The Bruins are terrible. Maybe I’m overstating that, but if they’re not terrible, they’re certainly not good, I think we can agree on that.
So if we lost to them, what does that make us? And where do we go from here? First question: We’re still an improved football team. I didn’t really like some of our play-calling last night. I kept wondering why we didn’t go down field with some of Marshall Lobbestael’s passes. But I don’t want to quibble too much with that – we were moving the ball until we got in the red zone.
Even though we barely beat Colorado and lost to UCLA, it’s great to see us fielding a competitive team again. We would have been blown out of both of those games in 2008 and 2009.
But the where-do-we-go-from-here question, man, I don’t know. Now our schedule gets a lot tougher. This week it’s Stanford at Martin Stadium. If the Cardinal can beat Colorado 48-7, surely they can name the score against us too. Hopefully not. For whatever reason – probably the return of Jeff Tuel – I have hope that maybe we’ll play with Stanford for awhile, and if we’re in the game in the fourth quarter, who knows?
Realistically, though, we’ll get our doors blown off to fall to 3-3, putting our bowl hopes and Paul Wulff’s job in jeopardy. The key game is the one at Century Link Field on Oct. 22 against the Beavers. We desperately need to beat Oregon State and should be slightly favored to do so.
After that, I’m not sure where we’ll find two more wins to get to a bowl game – maybe at Cal, probably at home against Utah, maybe at Century Link in the Apple Cup.
That’s about all I’ve got today. I’m disappointed and am not feeling up to par. Too many beers last night at J. Michael’s in Redmond (thanks Erin, you were a great host). Probably shouldn’t have had the two shots of Jagermeister. Took a cab home. Not sure if it helped to have a Jumbo Jack, curly fries and Oreo shake at 2 in the morning, but that’s what I had before going to bed at 3.
Hope everyone has a good Sunday. Go Cougs.
The scary thing? Oregon State in Martin Stadium is a “W”. At a neutral site at the CLink? I’m not so sure… I sure hope the financials of this game make it worth a possible loss…
They need to fire Paul Wulff and hire your boy Slick Rick.
I was pretty bummed about the loss too. I remember when we were driving up by 2, I thought to myself “I hope we go up 9 and not 5 on this drive.” Instead we play it safe and kick a FG. I agree with you, why not go down the field to your bigger, taller WR’s? And our red zone offense…. they need to get a little more creative with that…. It is like they knew exactly what we were going to do.
That might have been the game that ends up costing Wulff his job. It’s too bad because I like what he has done with the program, I’m just not sure he can translate that into wins. We may need someone to come in and take what he has started to the next level (Not Slick Rick or Mike Stoops).
Why would the Cougs want to go in there, there were GOALPOSTS in there! Everybody knows Cougars are afraid of those…