Sep. 21—PULLMAN — Colby Humphrey had his hands up and everything. He was in the right spot. Bodied up the receiver. Nearly broke up the pass in the end zone.
Still, Washington’s Denzel Boston hauled it in. With that catch, UW took an early lead in an eventual 59-24 win over WSU on Saturday, reclaiming the Apple Cup with a runaway fourth quarter. The Cougars never did produce a stop on defense.
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From a 30,000-foot view, this truth emerges: Those kinds of plays represented the gulf separating UW and WSU at the moment, the kind that made the difference in the 117th Apple Cup. One team is a Big Ten program flush with NIL cash and the players to match. The other is a club operating in a rebuilding conference under a new head coach and 74 new players.
That’s how you wind up with a matchup like Humphrey vs. Boston: A 5-foot-11 FCS transfer against a 6-foot-4 wideout projected to be taken in the first round of next spring’s NFL draft. It’s how you wind up with a score like 59-24. It’s how you end up with such a lopsided fourth quarter, which the Huskies won 28-0.
None of this is an indictment on WSU. Coach Jimmy Rogers has no control over the state of the program, the fact that his is one of two holdovers in the traditional Pac-12. He had even less control over when he took over, in late December of last year, when many of the players who entered the transfer portal had already committed to new programs and all but every class of 2025 high school prospect had put pen to paper.
It’s even less of a dig at Humphrey, who has been an excellent cornerback for the most part in his first four games at WSU. With the exception of a blowout loss last week, he’s played heavy snaps and has rarely wavered. But what can you do when you’re giving up 5 inches and more than 20 pounds? Good coverage only gets you so far in that kind of scenario.
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That speaks to the larger point here: A well-played game only goes so far when the individual matchups don’t favor you. That isn’t just an observation made from afar. It’s the reality that prompted Rogers to tell reporters he was holding a QB competition for the starting job in Saturday’s game — when he had already chosen Zevi Eckhaus the day prior.
Here’s what happened: After quarterback Jaxon Potter threw three interceptions and WSU absorbed a 59-10 road loss to North Texas last week, Rogers indicated that because of Potter’s regrettable outing, he would have Potter compete with Eckhaus and redshirt freshman Julian Dugger for starting duties on Saturday. It was an “open competition,” Rogers said.
Then on Wednesday, Rogers backtracked. He said he had already chosen his starter on Sunday. He didn’t hold the kind of competition he described earlier, he said. After Saturday’s game, he confirmed this “gamesmanship” was an effort to confuse coaches at UW, which already had advantages in the talent department. If Rogers could squeeze an extra competitive advantage out of a fake QB competition, he would.
“We don’t have the resources naturally to compete with $30 million and a roster that’s loaded,” Rogers said after the game. “But I need to make those coaches work for an extended period of time, to go back and watch Julian Dugger play in the bowl game and watch Zevi play against Syracuse (in last year’s Holiday Bowl).
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“The reality is, wrong or right, there’s some gamesmanship in this as far as, if you don’t have all the moving pieces that you want at the current moment. … We need to grow, and we will.”
Earlier this year, WSU athletic director Anne McCoy said the Cougar s football program would receive $4.5 million in NIL funding, not counting things like scholarships and stipends. It’s unclear what UW’s NIL number is, but earlier this year, coach Jedd Fisch said this: “We are going to max it out, which is 22% of our TV revenue, or $20.5 million, that’s been guaranteed to us.”
Washington has always had something of a recruiting advantage over WSU. It became even more pronounced when UW entered the Big Ten, competing against top-ranked Ohio State next week, while WSU no longer enjoys the draw of the Pac-12 the way it did for decades.
For WSU, the encouraging part was that despite the differences separating the two programs, the NIL gap and conference affiliations and everything else, the Cougs remained within striking distance for three-plus quarters. In his first start of the season, Eckhaus completed 25 of 36 passes for 277 yards, two touchdowns (three total) and two interceptions. He almost singlehandedly kept his group in the game.
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Eckhaus was far from perfect — he threw two picks, though it’s fair to wonder if those were truly his fault, and he did lose a fumble — but we say singlehandedly because of how little time he had to make decisions. He was sacked three times. He was pressured a whopping 25 times. He made some of his best throws backpedaling, firing off his back foot.
Consider this: On Saturday, four WSU offensive linemen yielded five pressures apiece, according to Pro Football Focus. One, left guard Johnny Lester, allowed four. In Week 4 of college football, among offensive linemen nationwide who logged at least 40 pass-blocking snaps, three of the 10 worst pass-blocking grades belonged to the Cougs: right guard AJ Vaipulu (22.8), center Brock Dieu (29.7) and Lester (30.6).
That meant a few things. One, per PFF, Eckhaus faced pressure on 22 of 40 dropbacks — more than half. To make one third-down conversion in the second quarter, Eckhaus was about to get taken down by UW’s Buddah Al-Uqdah, so he leaned on his back foot and slung a pass across his body to Tony Freeman, who reeled it in on a slide. It was one of Eckhaus’ best throws in limited reps at WSU.
But he had to make those plays on his back foot, sometimes flat-footed, because of the near-constant pressure he was facing. Cougars coaches did well to scheme Eckhaus away from pressure, using rollouts to give him space to throw, where he made even sharper throws. Offensive coordinator Danny Freund should get some kudos for that.
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But that was done out of necessity because of the mismatches WSU faced up front, where they were most noticeable. Eckhaus threw his first interception because left tackle Ashton Tripp was burned on a spin move by UW edge Zach Durfee, who hit Eckhaus as he threw, causing the wayward toss. He threw his second in a collapsing pocket, targeting tight end Trey Leckner, who wasn’t looking for the ball.
“I’m super grateful to be able to go out there and represent such a historic and iconic brand,” Eckhaus said, the emotion audible in his voice. “It’s tough. I mean, it’s tough. Every game is important, but this one’s important, you know? And I feel like I let the guys down a little bit. I don’t think that I played my best ball, and sure, some things could have gone differently. But it hurts. It definitely hurts. And I wish I could have a couple of ways back, but we gotta keep moving forward.”
Can Eckhaus improve? Certainly, and it stands to reason he will. Next week, when they travel to take on Colorado State, the Cougars don’t figure to face the same kind of mismatches on the offensive line. Eckhaus will also have more rapport with receiver Devin Ellison, who made his season debut on Saturday after missing the first trio of games with an injury.
WSU has a lot to correct: up front, where the Cougars can’t afford to allow the same level of pressure; on defense, where they can’t afford to miss another 17 tackles, which was their total against the Huskies.
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This context is also important: WSU was without starting defensive tackle Bryson Lamb, who sustained an injury during warmups, Rogers said. Fellow starter Max Baloun exited early with his own injury and returned on crutches, forcing the Cougars to go even smaller on the defensive line — which was already a problem to begin with.
But many of the problems Washington State ran into were a product of the state of the program — and the state of Washington’s. In situations like these, sometimes there’s only so much you can do. Humphrey found out the hard way.
