In season-opener against Portland State, new era of Washington State football dawns: ‘There’s just so much excitement’

PULLMAN – During the past eight months, so many of the coaches in Washington State’s building tried to visualize the beginning of this season.

They thought about it when they helped players work out in the January snow, knowing the rewards it might reap.

“But to finally be here,” WSU coach Jake Dickert said, “there’s just so much excitement for our team, our coaching staff, hopefully, our university, our fan base, it’s just all coming.

“The sights and sounds of football are here, and what an opportunity that’s afforded to us.”

The beginning of WSU’s season is here, starting with a home matchup against FCS Portland State at noon Saturday.

The Cougars, trying to put last season’s 5-7 effort in the rearview mirror, will play in front of a national audience on The CW network.

That’s about all the similarities to find between this WSU season and the ones that preceded it. The Cougars might open against an FCS foe, but with a nonconference game against rival Washington and eight Mountain West Conference opponents on the horizon, it’s becoming clear just how drastically different this Washington State season will look.

The Pac-12 no longer exists, at least not the way we came to know it over the past century. Left are only WSU and Oregon State, both of which entered scheduling agreements with the MWC to populate their schedules this fall. WSU and OSU will meet on Thanksgiving weekend, which is usually when WSU would play UW, another sign of how much has changed around the Cougars’ orbit in the last year or so.

In some ways, things might look bleak for the Cougars – their options are to rebuild the Pac-12 with other programs or find a way to latch on with a Power Four conference – but in others, they have a special opportunity on their hands. In the normal Pac-12, WSU’s only path to the College Football Playoff was to win the conference.

But now the playoff has expanded to 12 teams. The Cougars are playing eight games against Mountain West opponents.

Dickert has taken care to avoid talking down on those foes – he’s repeatedly reminded people that walking out of places like Boise and Fresno, California, with wins isn’t as easy as it sounds – but he’s also been enthusiastic about the way these circumstances open things up for his team.

WSU’s path to national contention may not be easy, but it appears more feasible. Dickert can’t do much about the spot WSU’s athletics department is in, but he can help put his club in position to do things it hasn’t before.

“How do you get 18- to 23-year-olds to block that out and focus innately on what we need to do?” Dickert said last month at the Pac-2 media day of sorts. “Yet there’s tons of opportunity. So I think that is a two-way street and how you attack it. But it’s all about approach. How do you walk into that game, that moment, that stadium?”

The Cougars won’t be walking into any stadiums but their own for the first two weeks of the season, and that starts with hosting Portland State, selected to finish 10th of 12 Big Sky teams in this summer’s preseason media poll.

Leading the Vikings’ attack is senior quarterback Dante Chachere, who is beginning his third season at Portland State’s starting QB.

A dual-threat quarterback who has eclipsed 1,300 career rushing yards, Chachere will try to give problems to a new-look WSU secondary, which took a blow last week when cornerback Jamorri Colson was ruled out for an extended period with an injury.

How the Cougars’ secondary responds – and how their front four assists in that effort may go a long way in determining the outcome of Saturday’s game. Redshirt freshman Ethan O’Connor is filling in for Colson, and he had an outstanding fall camp. But it will also be his first action since playing two snaps against FCS Northern Colorado last year, his only college appearance .

It will also be the starting debut of WSU quarterback John Mateer, who is following a two-year stint as Cougars backup with his new role as QB1. He won the role over Bryant transfer Zevi Eckhaus, and with a group of new receivers in the fold – including Oregon transfer Kris Hutson, Austin Peay transfer Tre Shackelford and junior college transfer Tony Freeman – the Cougars’ offense will look plenty new.

“Just (told him) to play within himself,” Dickert said of Mateer. “He doesn’t need to be anybody else than John Mateer, and I’ve told him that a million times. That’s good enough. And if he plays within our system, we surround him with a ton of playmakers to get the ball out, and then when it’s time to go and be him, go do that.”