Can WSU rebound like last year after disappointing Week-1 loss?

It’s been a few days since Washington State lost to Eastern Washington in what I wouldn’t call an unfathomable outcome, but it’s still hard to come to terms with anyway.

The 45-42 defeat at Martin Stadium isn’t as surprising as last year’s season-opening loss to Portland State. The Eagles have typically had a stronger program than the Vikings, but still, they’re both FCS schools, and a Division I school like WSU is supposed to have the better team, all things considered.

Eastern coach Beau Baldwin told “Brock and Salk” on Monday that his players took it personally. Those who weren’t recruited by the Cougs wanted to show Mike Leach what he missed out on. It’s another example of emotion occasionally compensating for a supposed disparity in talent.

I say supposed disparity because Leach said after the game that Eastern’s first-stringers were comparable to WSU’s first-stringers. Actually from what I saw, Eastern’s first-stringers were BETTER than Washington State’s, and that shouldn’t be the case.

Like everyone else, I’m trying to figure out why we’ve lost all five season openers since Leach arrived. In some instances we’ve simply played superior teams, as was the case with BYU and Auburn. But that’s not a good explanation for Rutgers, Portland State and Eastern Washington.

Maybe if teams have all kinds of time to prepare for the Air Raid offense, that makes a big difference. But the Cougs still scored 42 points, so that doesn’t make sense either.

For all of the hope that this year will be like last year, that Washington State will rebound like it did last year after the Portland State loss, it doesn’t necessarily feel that way to me. Last year we played a sad-sack Rutgers team on the road and barely beat the Scarlet Knights to rejuvenate the season. This year we’ve got to go to Boise State, a much better team with a bigger home-field advantage.

And our defense appears to be worse than last year’s defense, allowing more than 600 yards to Eastern. Eastern wide receiver Cooper Kupp is good – we knew that – but we made quarterback Gage Gubrud, who was making his first start behind five new offensive linemen, look like Russell Wilson.

If Gubrud and the Eagles can shred our defense, what will Oregon do to it? And Washington? And most of the other Pac-12 offenses? How about Brett Rypien and the Broncos this week? Good Lord, I don’t even like to think about that. Even with Shalom Luani returning to the secondary this week, he won’t help if we can’t generate a better pass rush than the one we had against Eastern.

And on the flip side, if we can allow a sack of Luke Falk on a three-man rush like we did against Eastern, what will happen against the fired-up Broncos on their blue field Saturday night? Our offense might be completely disrupted, creating the possibility of a double-digit Boise State win. That’s what oddsmakers think will happen – Boise State is an 11 ½-point favorite.

If they lose in Boise and defensive issues continue, a 1-5 start is suddenly a possibility with Idaho, Oregon, Stanford and UCLA coming next on the schedule.

Then again, maybe Eastern is a really good team and in time, we’ll find out that the Cougs are, too. It’s just that the early indications aren’t promising – for the fifth year in a row.

The Go 2 Guy also writes for SeattlePI.com and KitsapSun.com. You can reach Jim at jimmoorethego2guy@yahoo.com and follow him on Twitter @cougsgo.