Can't Judge a game…

I like to look through the scores of high school and college football games the following day. It’s kind of interesting to wonder how one team beat another team in what seems to be an upset. Was the losing team playing a road game or did the star quarterback get hurt? How did such a great defensive team give up 35 points?

You can ask five people that were at the game and get five different answers. At least four of them will say, “We didn’t play very good.” Others will be a little more dramatic or use more colorful language in telling the story of the failure that was witnessed.

EWU won a game on Saturday 62-55 at Western Illinois. If you just look at the score you might think the game went into several overtime sessions but it didn’t. The Eagles led 55-21 at halftime and 62-28 in the third quarter but would have to hold on for dear life until the final gun went off.

I didn’t watch the game for a bunch of good reasons. I did hear from my friend Ken who was not impressed with the defensive side of the ball and the lack of crisp tackling when it was needed most.

Being 3-0 is a good thing but honestly the Eagles haven’t played a great team yet. UNLV is an FBS opponent but not a very good one. Central Washington is a pretty good Division II team but just not good enough to be competitive with an FCS team from the Big Sky Conference. Western Illinois was shutout by Montana a couple of weeks ago so a smart Eagle fan has reason to believe that the Eagle defense has a lot of work to do and they would be right.

Fans of the Cougars and the Huskies also have a bunch of question marks concerning their teams. The Huskies won Saturday but Arkansas State isn’t a real good indicator as to how much UW improved over a two week period of time.

WSU got smacked in the mouth by a USC team that hadn’t been living up to their abilities and because of that their head coach lost his job. As is usually the case with a talent laden team either the players or the interim coach gets the point across that had we played up to our expectations we would be undefeated and the coach wouldn’t have lost his job. Of course there are other players that are glad the coach got fired and now they are ready to give maximum effort. There usually isn’t a lot of that group which is fortunate and sometimes it only takes one to make the locker room toxic.

The Cougars will just need to rally and get a signature win soon. Most everyone felt that they would have had a better chance winning the game with the old USC coach leading the charge. For some reason once a talented group gets that wakeup call they will respond. Recruiting is a lot simpler for USC than it is for WSU. There are a lot of talented kids near the USC campus. There is a lot of fertile farm ground near the WSU campus.

The Seattle Seahawks played their home opener against the Tennessee Titans and would lose the game in overtime after having a double digit lead. The defense once again had trouble getting off the field and Titan running back Derrick Henry ran with brute force through the Seahawk ‘D’. It was a very tough loss for the home team 33-30 but since there are 17 games on this year’s schedule maybe this won’t come back to bite them on their back side. Let’s be hopeful.

The LRS Broncos’ game at Kettle Falls was postponed or cancelled last Thursday due to C-19 protocols. That game would have been a good one to play before the NWC Crusaders come to town on Friday night to play the Broncos at Jimmie Snider Field.

It is a real juggling act making sure the kids are healthy and that referees are available. That is why games have been moved to Thursdays and Saturdays this year. Now that Middle School football games will be played on Thursdays there is a chance that many of these officials may have to go from a middle school game to a high school game nearby.

We can always look at a game score and get a good idea just how it played out on the field but chances are we have no clue because you can’t judge a game by its final score!