Leach lauds team’s coachability
Washington State coach Mike Leach’s 10th-ranked team has gone from being predicted to finish fifth in the Pac-12 North before the season to being the Pac-12’s last hope for a spot in the College Football Playoffs.
Leach said Monday during his weekly press conference that the Cougars (7-1, 4-1 Pac-12) head into this Saturday’s home game against Cal (5-3, 2-3) as the most coachable team he’s had in his 17 years as a head coach.
“I think we’re getting better as a team because we’ve got a good group that does respond to coaching and they’ll make the improvements asked so then you can begin working on something else,” Leach said. “One thing that (linebackers coach) Ken Wilson says all the time that I think is pretty good is he’ll tell them something and then he’ll say, ‘Make me coach something else other than what I just told you, why do I keep telling you that, make me coach something else,’ and they’ve done a good job of making us coach something else.”
Washington State’s four-game winning streak also has much to do with the performance of graduate transfer Gardner Minshew II, who left East Carolina in what is one of the best moves in the history of college football.
Some national analysts have questioned Minshew’s size at 6-foot-2 and 220 pounds as being big enough for the NFL. And they have mentioned that Minshew may be a system quarterback, thriving mostly because he leads Leach’s pass-happy Air Raid offense.
“As far as production and performance, I think this he’s the best (quarterback),” Leach said of Minshew, who tops the nation averaging 397.9 passing yards a game. “I guess folks are kind of dancing around that a little bit. It doesn’t really affect anything that we do. I think he needs to improve and I think he needs to improve as fast as he can, but you know all of these comparisons and stuff, he’s got the best numbers so he’s the best one.”
In terms on being on the cusp of the College Football Playoffs, Leach argues that more than only four teams should be allowed. He chastised the NCAA’s stance that having more teams would be too difficult on the players because of academics.
“That’s the lamest reason of all,” he said. “The reason why it’s the lamest reason of all is because if you think about when playoffs are, a lot of it would take place when guys are out of school anyway. They put their hand over their heart and get sanctimonious and, ‘We can’t do this’, which of course none of that’s happening to begin with.”
