The Washington St. Cougars are actually ready for the regular season.
They might not be great, they might not be the best, and they're certainly not going to win the Pac-12. But for once, the Cougars do feel like they compete week-in, week-out in the conference, a feeling they haven't had in a long time.
Washington State conducted its first scrimmage on Thursday, and everything went pretty well. Vince Grippi of the Spokesman Review was there on the scene, and it looked like Paul Wulff's primary concern was to make sure everyone stayed healthy.
The first-team Cougars offense played one live series before settling down for the day, and the defense did manage to hold them in check. Considering Jeff Tuel is the brightest spot on a team that will struggle all season, the fact that Washington State's D held the offense to a field goal is promising.
Here is some video of the practice (HT to Grippi).
(via WSUCougarAthletics)
You can see that the Cougars seem more committed to running the zone-read offense from shotgun (with one play out of the pistol formation). It appears that Washington State still doesn't have the horses on the offensive line to commit to blocking entire front sevens out, so they'll try to leave one defender unblocked and try to exploit that with more spread looks.
Of course, these are mainly snaps without Tuel. But it's nice to see the Cougars have a secondary look on offense in case their main signal-caller goes down.
For more of WSU football, go to CougCenter.