WSU rewind: After loss to Boise State, what can the Cougs do about their tackling issues?

PULLMAN – Let’s get one thing out of the way before we talk about the tackling issues Washington State faced in a blowout loss to No. 25 Boise State on Saturday night.

There is no shame in struggling to bring down Ashton Jeanty.

Jeanty, the Broncos’ star running back, racked up 259 yards and four touchdowns on 26 carries. He gashed the Cougs’ defense for long touchdown runs of 64 and 59 yards, plus shorter bursts of 14 and 2 yards. He seems to be a consensus contender for the Heisman Trophy candidate at the moment, and if he wins the award, expect to see some highlights from his outing against WSU in his season recap video.

The Cougs met the same fate all three of the Broncos’ three other opponents have this season. They couldn’t bring him to the ground, at least not enough to stop him from breaking out for a huge night. WSU was only the latest victim to Jeanty’s elusiveness in what figures to be a long line of them this fall.

“We couldn’t stop No. 2,” WSU coach Jake Dickert said.

Nobody has found a way to do that this season. But through five games this season, under second-year defensive coordinator Jeff Schmedding, the Cougs haven’t much been able to tackle consistently – no matter the opponent. WSU whiffed on 17 tackles against Portland State, 19 against Texas Tech, 16 against Washington, nine against San Jose State.

Against Boise State, WSU missed 26 tackles. Jeanty forced 17 on his own. The Cougs’ leading culprits included safety Adrian Wilson and linebacker Kyle Thornton (both with five), cornerback Ethan O’Connor and safety Tanner Moku (both with three), plus linemen Bryson Lamb and David Gusta and edge Syrus Webster, who totaled two missed tackles apiece.

That makes Washington State (4-1) the country’s worst tackling team, according to Pro Football Focus, which has given the Cougs a tackling grade of 29.7 for the season. They now have missed 87 tackles this year, most in the country, three more than second-place Akron, which has 84.

This fall, WSU redshirt sophomore linebacker Buddah Al-Uqdah leads the team with 13 missed tackles, which is second most in the country for an individual. He’s played well otherwise, forcing and recovering a fumble against Texas Tech, forcing seven incompletions in coverage, a solid number for a linebacker. But like many of his teammates, his tackling has eluded him.

After that, Thornton has nine missed tackles and Wilson has eight. Six different Cougs have five apiece, including four players in the secondary: O’Connor, nickelback Kapena Gushiken and safeties Tanner Moku and Jackson Lataimua, the last of whom left the injury tent without his uniform in Saturday’s fourth quarter. Dickert had no update on his status after the game.

“Very special player,” Thornton said of Jeanty. “But obviously (tackling) has been a little bit of a theme here for us, and I think the bye week is the perfect time to get better at it. And obviously, going forward, it’s just luckily about defense. That’s the primary thing you can focus on, and you get to do it almost every play. So you get 80 reps a game to practice at it, and it’ll get better.”

What can the Cougs do to improve their tackling? They spent inordinate amounts of time in practice last week on tackling, according to safeties and nickels coach Jordan Malone, who shared some of the same tackling tactics Dickert emphasized heading into Saturday’s game: wrap and squeeze; go low; aim for the middle of Jeanty’s “strike zone,” or the part of his body to hit and bring him to the ground.

But none of it seemed to matter when the game arrived.

On his 64-yard touchdown rush, which came in the first quarter, Jeanty shed about four tackles around the line of scrimmage before reversing fields and gaining 6 yards.

On his 59-yarder in the fourth, Jeanty made two Cougs miss, then dragged cornerback Steve Hall into the end zone for another touchdown.

It seemed like WSU could have done a little more to bring Jeanty to the ground, strong and quick as he is. On his first touchdown run, Thornton missed on a diving attempt before Wilson went head-first and also missed. Then Gushiken aimed too high, falling for Jeanty’s stiff arm.

On his second long touchdown rush, Moku also dove and whiffed. Seconds later, Thornton couldn’t bring him down from behind. Then, safety Tyson Durant overpursued, running himself into a block that freed Jeanty up for the rest of his long sprint to the end zone.

Maybe Thornton is right ; maybe WSU will come out of this week’s bye with better tackling skills and even better habits. The Cougs do get a respite from facing star running backs when they visit Fresno State on Oct. 12. But after Saturday’s game, Dickert admitted improving in a big way isn’t so easy midseason.

“I think any time you’re in the middle of a season and you have a tackling issue, it’s hard to just remedy in the middle of the deal,” Dickert said. “You look back to the plan, how much you tackle in fall camp, what you do in practice. We’re a little bit beat up as that game went on, but (it’s) some strike zone stuff. We gotta wrap and squeeze.

“(Jeanty) is a phenomenal player. I wanna say that he’s faster probably than what I gave him credit for coming into the game. We always knew he was gonna break tackles, but he can break out and hit the big ones. That’s what separates him, probably from everybody else in the country.”

WSU did show some promising moments on the tackling front in Saturday’s game. After Jeanty broke that first long touchdown rush, the Cougs rallied to the ball well, and at one point, besides the touchdown run, Jeanty had collected just nine carries for 22 yards. Later in the game, Lataimua made a nice open-field tackle (albeit the one that knocked him out of the game) and so did O’Connor.

But for the Cougs, those moments are becoming more of exceptions than rules. They might not face a running back like Jeanty on the rest of their schedule, but if they can’t find a way to improve in the tackling department, that might not matter.