It was a game of fascinating physics.
Haze drifted lazily under the stadium lights. The football bounced around like a cursor controlled by Russian hackers. You could see the Cougars' disrupted biorhythms as clearly as you can see the human heart in an anatomical illustration.
It was all so graphic, in fact, that Mike Leach completely ignored the physics Friday night at Berkeley, Calif., and zeroed in on the psychology. Otherwise he wouldn't be Mike Leach.
Why did his previously unbeaten Washington State team lose 37-3 to a Cal Bears club with a winless conference record? Because the Cougars had "listened to the noise," he said. And he was probably right, in his hyperbolic way.
Given the Cougs' track record since the start of the 2016 season, it wouldn't be shocking to hear they'd gone a little gaga last week, that they began to relish the flush of uncritical praise that a 6-0 team attracts.
They no doubt savored the speculation about their chances of reaching the national playoffs. They probably felt avenged by quarterback Luke Falk's sudden ascent in the Heisman Trophy polls. They likely placed too much credence in their opponent's fecklessness the previous week at Washington.
Leach also plausibly described how the Cougars' wrongheadedness evolved during the course of the evening. To paraphrase, it started as simple overconfidence and morphed into a calm misdiagnosis of the problem, a refusal to admit Cal was simply playing harder than they were. Then, at some point in the second half, the Cougs started to panic.
Blaming himself for failing to sense the complacence behind the "determined expressions on our face" during the week, Leach said there were no exceptions to the Cougars' capitulation to self-delusion.
"Did Luke (Falk) just have a bad game?" someone asked the Air Raid guru.
"Everybody had a bad game," Leach said. "Was there a position you thought had a good game? Name it."
"What about the defense?" a reporter offered. "It seemed like they were trying to keep you guys in the game."
"They were terrible," said Leach, who is perhaps slightly rankled by the hosannas that unit has inspired in recent weeks. "They were terrible. What game did you watch? ... You're searching for a bright spot. But there's no bright spot. We were pathetic. We were a bunch of pathetic front-runners."
This may be the only coach in America who criticizes the media for going soft on his team.
There was one thing that everyone in the interview room would probably agree on: They had just watched a wacky football game. And it only grew odder when the Cougars, to invoke Leach's diagnosis, transitioned from complacent to frantic.
We could talk about the botched shovel pass, the 1-yard punt, the late California scoop-and-score. We could describe how Cal quarterback Ross Bowers, whose mother formerly coached gymnastics at the University of Washington, demonstrated the Bears' superior gumption on this night with an Olympian flip over a linebacker into the end zone.
For that matter, we could back up and talk about the smoke from regional wildfires hovering in Memorial Stadium like an unnamed menace, and the smattering of fans who wore masks. We could talk about the Cougars' second Friday-night game in three weeks, this one on the road, which no doubt contributed to their look of disorientation.
We could talk about the injury gods who, like gunmen ambushing a group and taking out the best marksmen first, targeted three seniors linebackers in the Cougars' first six games.
My personal favorite came with four minutes left, when a battered, newly reckless Falk threw over the middle for Jamire Calvin, and fast-closing Cal safety Derron Brown descended on the slotback at just the right moment, sending the ball twisting into the haze.
As it fell, 6-foot-3 receiver Tay Martin deftly used a boarding-house reach to spike it away from safety De'Zhon Grace, but the thing somehow bounced off the hands of linebacker Gerran Brown and safety Quentin Tartabull made a diving interception, millimeters above the turf. In all, five players touched the ball in the air before it was secured.
The caprices of bouncing footballs, of course, are beside the point. But the crowd of defenders on that play typified the challenges Falk is facing these days, especially against speedy defenses. Even on a night when he's being sacked nine times and pressured relentlessly, there are still many instances when opponents are flooding the defensive backfield and Falk simply can't find an open receiver.
"There's nothing wrong with us physically," Leach said, meaning X's and O's as well as talent and health. "There's nothing wrong with us physically whatsoever."
But he delivered the message so emphatically that you wonder if it's true.
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Grummert may be contacted at daleg@lmtribune.com or (208) 848-2290.
