PULLMAN, Wash. - What a 10 day rollercoaster it has been for the San Diego State Aztecs, who were dismantled by the Washington State Cougars on Saturday, 36-13 at Gesa Field.
Looking to build off their impressive 42-0 shutout against Stony Brook last Thursday, this was not the week two the Aztecs were expecting. This is the type of game that has people questioning where the direction of this program is heading with second year head coach Sean Lewis.
"Obviously not a great effort," Lewis said. "(I) need to do a better job coaching and leading. Need to do a better job with our third down plan. Need to do a good job with the fundamentals and putting together a great practice plan here over the next 14 days so we can learn and we can grow from this opportunity."
They started the game with a five play, 56 yard touchdown drive on their second possession, scoring on a 35-yard TD pass from Jayden Denegal to wide-out Jacob Bostick. After that, they couldn't do anything offensively for their next seven possessions going into halftime.
This was results from those possessions: punt (three plays, two yards), punt (three plays, six yards,) punt (three plays, negative two yards), punt (three plays, six yards), punt (five plays, 20 yards), safety (two plays, negative eight yards) and one running play to go into the half. Yikes.
"Got a lot of disappointed guys in the locker room because I know they could play better," Lewis said. "It was a good plan by the Cougs. They executed better than us tonight."
Junior punter Hunter Green punted the ball seven times and netted for 307 yards, averaging 43.9 a boot with his longest being 67 yards.
What was surprising was how they completely avoided handing the ball off to their most skillful player on offense, running back Lucky Sutton.
In week one, Sutton finished with 22 carries and 100 yards, 15 of those came during the first half. Sutton in the first half tonight only had seven attempts for 35 yards and was averaging five yards a pop.
It's one thing for a team to transition to pass only game plan if they're trailing by multiple scores, but they were down 12-7 before the Cougars scored a touchdown just before halftime. Even then, 19-7 doesn't call to be one dimensional with two full quarters to go.
Why avoid what's working? Why make yourself so predictable against a stubborn defense while on the road?
The junior did manage to finish the game with 88 rushing yards on 15 carries. What made SDSU look so notable last week was their run game, which finished with 53 rushes and totaled for 226 total yards out of the team's 453.
Denegal didn't look as promising as he did the previous week, making more mistakes on his decisions and was inaccurate on multiple throws. He did make it through the first two games without turning over the ball, but completed only 50% of his throws (15-for-30) with 133 yards passing with the one TD to Bostick.
What also hurt him was him not choosing to use his legs at times.
One play specifically near the halfway point of the three quarter, Denegal had a chance to convert a fourth and three in Wazzu territory. And with no defenders within 10 yards, he chose to roll away from the pocket and throw a ball out of the reach of tight end Jackson Ford.
Instead of easily picking up the first down by running it himself, he chose to make the difficult pass and was nowhere close to capitalizing.
It was overall a disappointing performance by the offense, only putting up 215 net total yards (133 passing, 82 rushing) on 60 plays and possessing the ball for 24:54. The Aztecs finished with 10 first downs and struggled on third down, going 2-for-13 and went 1-for-4 on fourth down.
The Aztecs leading receiver was sophomore Jordan Napier with seven catches, 69 yards on 12 targets. The next was Bostick with 48 yards on three receptions.
The defense didn't play as bad as the scoreboard says. While they did allow 396 yards and four touchdowns, they kept the scoring to a minimum for a while until the Cougars started to build momentum in the second and third quarter, and they caused the them to punt the ball five times and forced a turnover on downs.
They also had a blocked field goal returned for a touchdown called back because the referees thought Chris Johnson was lined up offside, which could have made the ending of the game more suspenseful.
However, the Aztecs weren't executing in the trenches, they did not register a sack and they missed quite a few tackles throughout the evening.
Also, a pair of Aztec team captains were seen dealing with an injury that forced them to leave the game during the third quarter. Center Ross Ulugalu-Maseuli had a knee injury and middle linebacker Tano Letuli had an issue with his left shoulder.
The Aztecs will have more time again to connect the dots and get rolling again with their upcoming bye during week three. The following week on Sept. 20, the Scarlet and Black will be back in action to take on the California Golden Bears in Snapdragon Stadium at 7:30 p.m.
"I'm encouraged to see how our guys respond," Lewis said. "They guys have told me time and time again that the culture is better, the connections better, and I'm looking forward to see how they respond because it's easy to be together and have a strong culture when things are riding high."
"We'll get tested with a little bit of adversity here early in the season with a group of young guys, particularly offensively they are going to pull together from this. We'll be better because of it and looking forward to a good two week prep as we go to face a really really good Cal team."
This story was updated at 12:50 p.m.