2021 was a challenging year for the Washington State football team, but the squad still managed to put up a successful season in the face of some intimidating obstacles.
After a bumpy start that saw the Cougars lose three of their first four games, WSU finally hit its stride in October with consecutive wins over Cal, Oregon State and Stanford.
But on Oct. 18, five days before WSU’s home game against BYU, head coach Nick Rolovich was fired for refusing to comply with the state’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate, along with four assistant coaches.
Into Rolovich’s spot stepped defensive coordinator Jake Dickert, who led the Cougars to a 3-3 finish, including the team’s first Apple Cup victory in nine years and a close loss to Central Michigan in the Sun Bowl, which featured a near-epic comeback by WSU.
With such an uplifting end to a season filled with challenges, expectations are high this year on the Palouse. Here are three keys to what WSU hopes is another successful season.
A new(ish) offense
Old things have become new again, as the Air Raid makes its return to the WSU program in 2022. This offseason, the Cougars brought in a familiar face to coordinate the offense in Eric Morris.
Morris, who spent the past four seasons as the head coach at the University of Incarnate Word, previously served the Cougars in 2012 as inside wide receivers coach under former head coach Mike Leach. He returns to Pullman to take over an offense with an exciting new quarterback at the helm in Cam Ward, who played the past two seasons for IWU under Morris.
Under Morris’ coaching last year, Ward ranked third in the FCS with 4,648 total passing yards, ranked second with 384 completions and was tops in the country with 47 passing touchdowns.
Before that, Morris was the offensive coordinator at Texas Tech, where he recruited and coached now-Kansas City Chiefs’ superstar Patrick Mahomes under head coach Kliff Kingsbury.
Morris brings an offense that will look familiar to WSU fans, with a variation of Leach’s old Air Raid system. This new version should see a bit more action from the halfbacks and tight ends, and Morris says that the run-pass ratio should be about “50-50.”
With a highly touted new quarterback that is already establishing himself as a program leader while the program re-implements an exciting brand of football, the Cougars’ offense has plenty of potential this season.
Coaching continuity
Dickert is WSU’s third head coach in four seasons and earned himself the permanent gig by lifting the program following the Rolovich firing last season. Under Dickert, the Cougars won three of their final five games, walloped the University of Washington in the Apple Cup by a 40-13 score at Husky Stadium and then nearly pulled off an epic comeback after trailing Central Michigan by 21 points at halftime in the Sun Bowl.
When Dickert took over what AD Patrick Chun called a “fractured” program, the mood of the team shifted. No longer was the vaccination status of the coaching staff hanging over the program like a storm cloud. Instead, Dickert brought the team some much-needed hope.
After more than a decade spent in a vagabond assistant coaching career, Dickert has finally found his “dream job,” and the Cougars seem to have a coach that is finally ready to stick around.
Defensive development
Before last season, “Washington State” and “defense” weren’t words that were often said together in a positive fashion. In 2020, the WSU defense allowed an average of 461.8 yards per game, an average of 5-rushing yards and 8-passing yards per attempt. Opposing teams also gouged the WSU defense for 155 rushing yards and 307 passing yards per game over the four-game season.
But 2021 proved to be a better year for the Cougars. The Dickert-led unit ranked fifth in the Pac-12 in average points allowed with 24.2, and the pass defense went from 307 to 217 yards allowed per game.
The WSU defense lost several key contributors like linebackers Jahad Woods and Justus Rogers to graduation but will also return players like All-Conference redshirt junior edge rushers Ron Stone Jr. and Brennan Jackson, along with senior cornerback Derrick Langford. WSU also brought in talented senior Nevada transfer Daiyan Henley at linebacker.
With Dickert now leading the program and former Nevada defensive coordinator Brian Ward taking over the same role at WSU, the continuation of a strong defense will be a key factor in how far the Cougars go this year.