PULLMAN \u2013 By now, you have probably read the statistic that might color Washington State\u2019s Pac-12 opener, a home matchup with Fresno State set for Saturday evening.<\/p>\n
Fresno State ranks No. 6 nationally with a turnover margin of plus-seven, while WSU ranks No. 119 with a minus-four.<\/p>\n
That paints a fairly accurate picture of the struggles of the Cougars\u2019 offense, which has committed seven turnovers on the season, including five from quarterback Caden Pinnick. They\u2019ve had trouble holding onto the ball, which figures to become even harder to do against a defense that has shown to be one of the country\u2019s finest at jarring it loose.<\/p>\n
So while WSU will get what figures to be a more even matchup against Fresno State, making a Cougar win possible, Pinnick has shown that the opponent is not what has prompted some of the bad decisions that have led to his turnovers. He\u2019s made regrettable decisions against the likes of Washington and FCS Duquesne, which is why we\u2019re picking the Bulldogs to walk out of Pullman with a win.<\/p>\n
In his first four games at the FBS level, Pinnick has shown to be sharp up to 19 yards out, hitting 49 of 69 of passes (71%) at that depth. And not only has he been less effective at distance, hitting on just 2 of 13 passes on throws of 20-plus yards with two interceptions . It\u2019s becoming clear that when he tries to stretch the field, he\u2019s vulnerable to making mistakes.<\/p>\n
For WSU, there\u2019s a way to counter that, which is to generate a credible ground attack. The Cougars are more than capable of doing that, but running back Kirby Vorhees is questionable to play due to an upper-body injury, which would remove one of offensive coordinator Matt Miller\u2019s unit\u2019s best weapons.<\/p>\n
Final score: Fresno State 24, WSU 20<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PULLMAN \u2013 By now, you have probably read the statistic that might color Washington State\u2019s Pac-12 opener, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":483400,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[112,114,113],"class_list":["post-483399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/483400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}