Wulff: Halliday had to prove himself

PULLMAN - The question is generally phrased more discreetly than this, but Paul Wulff keeps getting asked this week, essentially, "Why hasn't Connor Halliday been playing all season?"

The short answer: He didn't seem quite ready.

Wulff, the embattled Washington State coach who has been answering quarterback questions all season, confesses some degree of surprise at the consistency Halliday displayed in a relief role Saturday night while throwing for a Pac-12 freshman-record 494 yards in the Cougars' 37-27 win over Arizona State.

First, he had to show consistency Monday through Friday, according to Wulff.

"We had some sit-downs with him earlier, three or four weeks ago," the coach said, "about how he's got to step up more and show more in practice, so we can have the confidence to put him in the game.

"And he did that. He responded for a couple of weeks, and so it got to the point where it was time to give him that opportunity. I knew after the Cal game (on Nov. 5) that it was time to give him a shot."

As planned before kickoff, Wulff replaced Marshall Lobbestael with Halliday for the Cougars' third possession against ASU, and the second-year freshman wound up completing 27 of 36 passes and piling up the biggest yardage total ever in a Cougar victory.

Paradoxically, the senior Lobbestael will relinquish his starting role on Senior Day as the Cougars (4-6, 2-5) play host to Utah (6-4, 3-4) at 2 p.m. Saturday in their final home game of the season. Their five-game losing streak behind them, the Cougs still need to win their final two contests to become bowl-eligible.

This will be the first career start for Halliday, who had looked promising but a bit erratic in two brief mop-up performances against Idaho State and Nevada-Las Vegas to start the season, then spent seven straight games on the sideline.

There are several reasons the Halliday option remained on the back burner for the Cougars until last week.

First, Lobbestael played brilliantly early in the season against struggling opponents. Later, coaches spent a couple of weeks trying to usher Jeff Tuel, their original starter, into the flow of the offense, until the junior aggravated his collarbone injury and passed the baton back to Lobbestael. Tuel has again been ruled out as a possible participant this week.

Nor has it ever appeared that quarterback play, as opposed to deficiencies in the trenches, was the Cougars' primary problem.

Nonetheless, Wulff said it may have cost them some wins. And every win appears crucial for the fourth-year coach as he tries to show enough progress to retain his job at season's end.

"Working through a quarterback situation the whole year, it may have affected at least two or three games that we ended up losing," he said. "So that's a tough pill to swallow."

In any case, Halliday's talent has been obvious, long before he was giving Lobbestael a staunch challenge for the backup role behind Tuel in preseason camp. No one who had watched WSU scout-team play in 2010, or who had seen Halliday lead Ferris High of Spokane to the Washington state 4A championship game the previous year, was surprised by his arm strength and accuracy last week.

"I liked his competitive nature, number one," Wulff said when asked about Halliday's assets as a prep player. "He's a fiery guy. I really liked his composure in the pocket. His accuracy to me was very good. His understanding of the passing game and how things came pretty naturally to him - those are things that stood out to us."

But the 6-foot-4, 179-pound rookie was and is a work in progress in terms of physical strength and some of the nuances of the position.

"It's been a maturity issue and a physical thing," Wulff said. "He's still a skinny guy. But he's got that knack. We've always known that. It's a big reason why we recruited him.

Wulff was less hesitant to throw a slender Tuel to the wolves as a true freshman in October 2009. But with the Cougars' extreme youthfulness that season, they were running a far simpler offense than the diverse, primarily no-huddle spread they're employing now.

And they weren't willing to forfeit much of that diversity for the sake of a talented but raw quarterback, as long as options like the well-seasoned Lobbestael existed.

"We're not going to be able to line up and power-I and run just a balanced ... pro style, per se," Wulff said. "The personnel we're going to get is the personnel we want to get for Washington State. We want to ... build to a situation where we're always highly productive offensively and explosive. And to do that, you've got to be wide open and you've got to be multiple.

"You recruit into that," he said, "and you raise them and you grow them up. When you do that in your program, they develop and learn a lot like Connor. After a couple of years, they're ready to go. I think your program is stronger for being more diverse in what you do."

NOTES - There's a less-than-formal tradition of starting certain seniors on Senior Day, but Lobbestael said that wasn't an issue in his mind this week as he handed his starting role to Halliday. "That's the coaches' job, to figure out who's going to give us the best chance to win," the senior said. "So we're on the same page in that. ... It's all good in my mind."

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Grummert may be contacted at daleg@lmtribune.com or (208) 848-2290.