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Podcast: Palouse Playbook - A Washington State Cougars Podcast Episode: SPRING COLLAB w/ FieldHouse Report Transcript: What's ET short for? Because he's got little legs. If you're interested in being great, you better look hard into Washington State. You want to be great? Go to Washington State, baby! Welcome back to the Palouse Playbook. We got Cougar Carlson back in the house. Friend of the pod. A big friend of the pod. We had him on earlier. He's wearing a Santa hat. If you missed that episode, well, we got him back this time. Welcome in, Cougar Carlson. How are you doing, my friend? Doing great. Doing great. Thanks for having me on again, guys. Love being on with you guys, and it's always a blast. Absolutely. Yeah, you know what? Where did he go? I'll keep it PG. This was a fun spring. This was a fun spring. We talked a lot about different positions. We had some other guys on here, WinnaLosePod, Lucas Ingham on the other day talking about different positions. One position group we haven't really dove into a whole lot is this tight end group, what they're going to look like. I mean, we have some kind of emerging names. You know, Cougar, I want to kick it over to you on your thoughts on this tight end group, what you see. We got Trey Lekner that we didn't get to see at all in the spring. How's that gonna look kind of going down the road? What are your thoughts on this tight end group and how it looks? Yeah, certainly. You got the likes of Trey Lekner that could certainly come in and probably make some great plays for the Cougs, but Jack Peterson, transfer out of UCLA, is gonna be a big target to find, and I'm really excited about him personally. Maybe I'm a little bit biased because, yeah, I grew up in LA and, yeah, I kind of have an affinity to that school still. But that being said, I think him joining our team, he's gonna make some great strides for us and be able to help stretch the field in ways that we haven't been able to do with the tight end in the past. Yeah, Chad, what are your thoughts on this tight end group and just from what we've seen, what we've gathered, Jack Peterson emerging super quick, Trey Lekner coming back. What are your thoughts? Well, Jack Peterson, one nice thing that I've seen just from videos, right? We're not in Pullman, but it's his leadership. You know, he's always kind of getting the guys going. And I love players like that. You got to have a couple of those guys. I call them glue guys. They keep the group together. But one guy that I always and like I only saw one play, one catch from this last year, but the size at 6'6", out of Kentucky. He was a South Dakota state transfer, Bo Baker. I mean, I feel like that size, the ability, the speed was there. He just couldn't stay healthy. I'd love to see how that kind of progresses, you know, in the new offensive scheme. He stuck around, obviously love Pullman. And then obviously you've got to love, and I know we're going to be touching on a little bit of the freshmen, incoming freshmen later, but I wanted to get ahead of you guys. The guy, similar size at 6'6", but the size, like he's listed at 270 on Scout. So we'll see what he comes in. Like that video you saw when he was playing in New Zealand and doing his drills and just looked like a, probably a rugby field. He looked something special. So he's just, you see a tight end group and spring that was very limited, a lot like a lot of positions. We had injuries at receiver. We had injuries at corner. So we didn't really see a lot of the tight end. We didn't really see much of our real offense, I feel like. So people are giving a hard time. Like, what is this offense? It'll come, it'll come, especially during this off season when you get those guys in there. So this tight end group could be somewhat special. I feel like it's just, we haven't seen it yet. And of course you're talking about Nathaniel Salmon there out of, out of New Zealand, 6'6", 274, big dude. I'm excited to see, and he's listed as a freshman with all the funky stuff he had to go through with, I guess, being the part of the Chargers organization at one point. We get him for at least one of those four years, five years of eligibility that he has. So excited to see what he brings to the table. Jack Peterson. I'm just going to name off some of the other tight ends here, just so no one's feeling left out. Peyton Reed, the redshirt freshman, also 6'6", 230 by way of Portland, Oregon, Westview High School. Cash Lando, 6'4", 242, out of Portland, Oregon, Franklin High School. And then also one of our hometown guys for, for the Gig Harbor and Knowlesy, Hudson Cedarlin out of Gig Harbor, Washington, Gig Harbor High School. Richard Senior, 6'3", 235. I believe he's a converted wide receiver. So this tight end group is a lot, and the personnel that they're going to be running is a little bit, I guess, different than, than maybe what we've seen in the past that, you know, 12 personnel and just having, you know, one to two tight ends kind of, you know, in rotation and everything. So yeah, that was, that's another thing that you don't see a whole lot with that air raid offense that we've seen for so long. And then as we got into the run and shoot, you'd see, I think you saw a lot of tight ends just, I guess, developed or in there, but just, you didn't see a lot of play calls for them. Like Adam Olafolaye last year had that one, you know, like five, 10 yard pass that he got in the end zone. I wanted to see more of him last year. This tight end group has a chance to, like you have way more options and you have a lot of good stuff that can come out of this tight end group. So I wanted to mention what we can see out of this group, what we can see as they integrate with, you know, the quarterback situation that we don't know is, you know, what's gonna, how it's going to pan out. We still don't have our starter yet. There's a lot of speculation out there, but as we're talking about quarterbacks and I know that this is, as we've seen from the comments, we can tell that this is, you know, maybe a touchy subject for everybody, but you know, we're just giving our opinions. There's, there's nothing malicious, anything like that. It's completely unbiased. It's what we're seeing. So if anything out there is really just bothering you, just, you know, I guess, continue to leave comments. We'll take them in, but I promise you we're, we're attacking these from an unbiased perspective. You got three guys that are duking it out for, for the quarterback position. Guru Carlson, what are you seeing? Yeah, personally, I was able to go to the Spokane spring game and watch some of that. Was a little distracted by my son who's eight years old, but had some fun. Got to watch Caden and Ashman or Pinnick and Ashman duke it out as the top two candidates. And yes, I know that Julian Duggar is certainly there, but those two really seemed to stand out between the three. And I think the only difference for me that I see in some of this that I think hasn't been brought up is maybe just a little bit of that size factor for Ken Pinnick. You know, because he's, I don't want, I don't even want to think he's six feet because I promise you he's probably closer to that 5'10", 5'11". But, you know, it seems to be a little bit of a, a gray area where you can kind of feather those passes over the top or be able to see over his own lineman in different situations. That's what I noticed from watching. Ashman seems to have a really good, you know, deep ball that he can throw here and there. And I like both quarterbacks. You know, just different scenarios dependent upon what the goals are of the team and how they see things playing out going into August. So. Yeah. And I've, I've said it multiple times. I think there's a way that Julian Duggar finds his way on the field. Like the kid's super athletic, the type of offense that you're running, you could see, you know, that style of, of offense. Whoever comes out as QB one, I'm excited to see how this, how this moves forward. I'm excited to see this team rally behind whoever QB one is, and it's gonna be a fun competition. I think, uh, you know, when it's all said and done, you're gonna, you're gonna see a good quarterback out there that's been handling a very good defense. Like whoever emerges, all three quarterbacks are going to be facing a really good defense to get prepared for game one or the full season. So I'm excited to see this quarterback competition continue to play out. I'm excited to see all three of these guys, this iron sharp and iron mentality. I know that they're duking it out, but I've seen those interviews. They look very collective as a group, as a quarterback group, um, seems like they're all bought into the same program. So it's that, that part's huge is they're all bought into the Kirby Moore program and that's, that's what we want to see. So you mentioned Pennick and uh Owen being the one, two. I mean, currently right now, like, what are Like that first day and I started watching, I'm like, I saw Russell Wilson right away. And where our offense is at, I feel like he just needs to be a facilitator. We need a QB in there. We don't need a gunslinger. We don't need somebody that's going to be thrown for 400 yards a game. We have several running backs that can take care of take care of the ball and do that. We need a guy that's just not going to throw interceptions. I know last night we were talking about it too, it's just we, our defense kept us in ball games even with, you know, having multiple turnovers during the game. So if we can go in and win that turnover battle, you have to imagine that we're going to come out on top majority of the time. Yeah, the Virginia game. I mean, the Ole Miss game, some of these games where if we don't turn the ball over a whole lot, we might be on top of some of these top 25 teams. And factor in, you know, I guess I'm not going to give my opinion. I want to get your opinion. Talk to me about this defense. Last year compared to because last year we had a great defense that was well constructed by a guy who does know defense. Now, his ability to coach an offense. I don't, I don't know. Good luck to them at Iowa State. We'll see how that kind of pans out for them and everything. We're past it. We need to move past it. But, but we get Trent Bray. Talk to me about this defense and just, you know, what we got, what we got going on on defense for 2026. Yeah, I think one thing that is a differentiator between the two teams is really you have a level of talent on this team that seems to be there. Whereas you could see that the way in which the defense played last year, there was cohesion, there was tactfulness on the coaching side on how they approached the level of the game this season. You can see that our talent is there, right? I mean, our defensive line, we have some hosses that can really get in there and get some pressure on the quarterback, which has been desperately missing for seasons. And we really need that going into the new PAC 12 this year. So we can really take control and obviously get out in front of the likes of Boise State and Oregon State, San Diego State, North, you know, all these other schools. And we just, you know, I think one player that really stands out to me that I've mentioned to you guys prior was certainly Caden Beatty. Just a big guy and, you know, in the trenches and, you know, he seems to be really dominant and he seems to be really effective. And because of that, I think we're going to and he's just one of, you know, defensive linemen that's going to make a difference in our defense this year amongst many others, because I think, again, we're one of the most well-balanced teams that we've seen in many years. And we spoke to prior to getting on. Now we had a funny name to call this. We call it Depthy before we got going here, but I think Gerthy, it just sounds a little bit better. This this is one of the most Depthy rosters that we've seen. I'll stay away from Gerthy. I'll stay away from Gerthy. It was funny when we said it. I'll leave it alone. But Depthy. One of the most Depthy rosters we've seen, especially on defense, especially on defensive line. We're seeing probably four rows, four lines deep, just like you'd watch a hockey game. These guys that can, you know, rotate in last night. I mentioned guys like Malachi Rice, Miliza Tucker, you know, guys that could really turn a corner and they're still I don't want I don't want to say this to diminish them, but maybe on the fourth line of of this roster or third line or kind of close. But you get down there and they're still absolute brawlers, absolute animals that could really turn the corner in their career. And when you have a defensive line that's built out like that, that is as Depthy as they say, we're excited to see what that backfield looks like. Talk to me a little bit more about what you saw at the spring game. Was there any other standouts? What stood out to you from the spring game? And this this one, we can keep it open, defense, offense, whatever you want to talk about. But yeah, talk to me about the spring game that you got to see. Yeah, so I think what you really just alluded to is the depth, right? And there were certainly some injuries that you saw that we had within, you know, the spring game. That being said, you can see that any plug there's plug and play scenarios where you can certainly pull in that next line and still depend on it to make a big key stop late in the game. If you needed to, if some of your big hosses up front, initially your a your a line is sitting there, you know, obviously just getting tired in the trenches and you have to replace them. That's the difference that I saw in what we have available to us is, as you said, depthy, you know, we're, we have a lot of depth on this team that we've just, you know, I don't know, we're, we're just, we're just bruisers and brawlers at this point. You know, we're, we're, we're able to really kind of facilitate what we want our excuse me, dictate what we want to do both on offense and defense. And I think the balance that these two sides of the ball are going to be able to see is going to be, you know, WSU should be feared this year, should really be feared. And that's my honest opinion going into this spring, you know, spring and summer ball. Um, and so we'll wait to see what their regular season holds for us. I agree. And I think most of us here at Up West Sports have kind of come to that same conclusion where Kirby Moore has done just a fantastic job of constructing a team, constructing a staff, a well getting Trent Bray is just absolutely insane that we got him to be our, our defensive coordinator and him just being from Pullman is awesome. All the ties that comes with it, structuring this team like you would at the SEC level, going to get Brad LaRondo that handles a lot of GM stuff. We've never seen that in Pullman before at any sport. So getting stuff like that, you're, you know, Kirby Moore is next level. The systems are in place, right? It's like, there's not a lot of, there's not a lot of, uh, woe is me. I mean, like we have everything we need. I mean, right. Uh, I just feel it's like it's cougs. We band together, but right. It's like, there's this, there's this tipping point as far as like, you can only do so much together. You have to put correct systems in place. You look at every single thing. It's like very methodical how they do things. So yeah, man, good Carlson. You, you jack me up. You jack me up right there. I got so excited when you said we should be feared, man. I'm at my toes. Speaking of feared, speaking of feared, looking around this brand new PAC 12. I'm excited. You know, teams like Texas state who may or may not have done well in the portal. Uh, Fresno state, um, you know, Utah state, all these teams, uh, Boise state, obviously Colorado state getting Jim Mora, who apparently doesn't like the cougs a whole lot. That might be a fun rivalry. Um, I don't know if you saw that whole Yukon bit where I think he was mad at Jake Dickert. And it was literally after he left and he was like, oh yeah, team up in the Northwest. Really? You know, they're poaching our players or, you know, I saw a whole bit. There's a whole thing. Um, Jim Mora, I don't think likes the cougs and yeah, um, I don't, uh, I hope we absolutely put it to Colorado state, but nonetheless, getting to this new PAC 12 chat, you had a question that you want to talk about with the schedule, everything. Talk to me, talk to Cougar. What do we got going on? Yeah, we know, uh, obviously the Huskies, we always kind of circle that on the calendar, but beyond that, just from like a regular season conference opponent, just tell me who you're most like that game you're most excited to watch. Well, I think everybody has it on their schedule for two different reasons and talking to people at the Spokane game. Uh, you know, Boise state is one of the most prepared games that people are preparing for in terms of it being close to being sold out already. They're the most tickets purchased for that game. That being said, don't put Fresno state on the back burner. And I say that because Fresno state is the very first new PAC 12 game for us. And so there's going to be a lot of enthusiasm, a lot of excitement to really show who we are as Washington state, that we can dominate this new conference. And those are the two games that I'm really looking forward to. And for personal reasons, due to the fact that my wife's family all went to Boise state, I will be at that game too, but I'm going to be at both of those games and I'm going to be jacked up to be in this, uh, probably on the sidelines and just having fun doing media stuff. So I love that. No, I'm right there with you, especially on Boise state. I was there at Hungry for us, so that's the game I want to circle and, hey, be prepared. They're gonna come after you with all they got, and that's the one I think they're gonna be really hungry for. That's, I mean, they have them as the number one defense. They did pretty well in the portal, especially on the defensive side. For me, just to be a little bit different, I'm gonna look at, I kind of circle that game down at Texas State down in San Marcos. I mean, if you're, you're somebody that likes to have a good time. I mean, you just go down, fly into San Antonio, fly into Austin, stay there, go see a Coug game. I think, I think UT might be playing around the same time too. I don't know, but anyways, I think that two games. Yeah, that San Marcos game, I'd be circling that. It looks like an electric stadium to be at. Yeah, well, you can bet your bottom dollar that the coaching staff is too because where do you think they're gonna get the recruiting pipeline from now that they have access to that pipeline? And so I'm excited for them just to have access to that pipeline. Well, it's the pipeline that Mike Leach dawned. He got so many Texas kids to come up here. So, and look how good we were with, with those Texas boys. So, yeah, we'd love to open up that pipeline again. And that was the other, okay, so I do have another question beyond this. Pertaining to the Pac-12, what school or schools would you like to see be added to make this conference stronger down the road? Are you, okay, so let me, I don't want to put, yeah, I know expansion, so not any returning Pac-12 schools, correct? You, I mean, you tell me. No, nosy, nosy put out Stanford and Cal, and I think we had a kind of as a collective hard pass on that one. Oh, well, I, I could appreciate where everybody comes from that, but they're gonna add some prowess to the conference, just based on the fact that they are Stanford and Cal. But they're an outlier within their conference, even though they've found some success within their respective sports. That being said, I saw a recent post, and I can't tell you every team and every school, but it basically, there was like a Pac-12, like East and West division. I don't know if you guys saw this on X, but basically, it was a lot of other schools that like Pac-12 was considering, you know, including Memphis and all these other schools on the East coast, and then just basically dividing the conference and then putting it into one major conference of like Pac-14 or something like that. And I thought that was an interesting concept. That being said, I would love to add another Texas school, because it's the, the Texas, the Texas state for recruiting is huge. And anywhere that Washington State can go and, and get inside Texas, obviously California, we're already on the West coast, so I think there's an advantage there if kids aren't considering Stanford, Cal, UCLA, or USC. Easy to sit there and say that they could come to Washington State. So, yeah, I love, I love where your head's at. UTSA, North Texas. There's some really good schools down there. I know North Texas just got depleted with their, you know, their coach, Mestemaker, everybody all left that program. But if you put them in the Pac-12, that might just elevate their game, that might elevate the money around them. They have a solid school. I think they have 30,000 plus students, like they have a, a solid school. Denton's a really good area. Dallas is an area that we would love to, I know we have Dallas Baptist, but they don't have football, so I'd love to continue getting Dallas as a, as a market, um, for, for the Pac-12. That would be huge. Um, and then, you know, if you continue to grow, schools like Houston that are kind of sitting on the lower end of the Big 12, maybe they reevaluate kind of where they're at and just say, Hey, you know, maybe we can go here and be a contender and, you know, take a look at, take a look at some, I don't know, just reevaluate, right? Like we're, we're a few games. You'd have to bring enough player. That's where coming back to Stanford and Cal and bringing enough players into it so that there's a bigger money pool. Because if Houston lose out, loses out on so much of that money, like, right? What are we getting like 12, 13 million? 13.2, I believe. Yeah, yeah. So we're, I think, yeah, and what we were previously making with the Pac-12. I mean, it's a, it's a big difference. And so, unless Houston can bring another big player in the game or Stanford and Cal come back simultaneously, um, then you've got to factor that in. And so I would always bring that into consideration because money is gonna always play a factor for these schools. Money is everything when it comes to this decision, unfortunately. Hey, it's the root of all evils, but that's all right. Um, but I'd say the biggest thing, I mean, I think it's gonna, we won't hear much through this season. I don't think we'll hear anything next year. I think it'll be 2020, or maybe a little bit next year, that 2028 season is when that AAC, I think also Sun Belt, uh, TV contracts up around the same time too. So it'll be interesting. Uh, I don't, I don't think, uh, college athletics has any say in it. I think it's the, I think it's ESPN, et cetera, of the world. But, and Chad, I was gonna say, uh who was your team? that you, you loved to see? Well, you know, it just made the most sense. It was just like, how did we not get them in the first place? Um, and I don't know if any notes have come out from the lawsuit as far as I know they came to an agreement, so that means, there was that as much as I see. Yeah, so it's a little frustrating. I, right now, I'm just kind of like on pins and needles waiting for that, um, because I know there's an out clause when it comes to UNLV. And I think Air Force was the other one where if they don't meet like a certain dollar amount, then they, it's a breach of contract and they can jump. So that'll be interesting to kind of see what unfold over the next, you know, few weeks or end of the season. Uh, UNLV is a big one for me. Going down to Ole Miss and going to uh Memphis, like I would love to, if we're gonna talk about like a Southeast conference, like I would love to bring in Memphis. Like let's continue to build on our basketball, uh, as far as a conference goes. Football, like obviously, not, not a power four conference. It, it won't be. And I'm okay with that. I love where we're at right now. But from a basketball standpoint, I feel like we can really elevate ourselves by adding a Memphis and then Tulane maybe kind of jumps in there too. I really like Tulane. We talked, we talked about if you want to go the basketball route, Wichita State, uh Creighton, having that really cool Midwest rivalry. This could be, uh, yeah, if you go the basketball route, there are so many other options that can elevate the Pac-12 quickly. I just don't know if the money's there basketball-wise versus if you try and go the football route. Exactly. So, uh. But if you want to be. Probably not. Yeah. Sorry, go ahead. But if you want to have, no, yeah, if you wanna have sweet 16 teams, if you wanna have teams that are competing on a national level. And basketball is, you know, kind of a major sport. Not kind of. It is a major sport behind, you know, football. There's, there's only a handful of schools that, or sorry, a handful of sports that really uh kind of elevate the, the TV ratings and stuff. So, yeah, um, I'm excited to see what this new Pac-12 looks like. Cougar Carlson, man. I can't thank you enough for being on, being on the pod. Um, we gotta get you back more often. We gotta, you know, get, get talking Coug football as we get through the summer and into the fall. Uh, where can everybody find you? Uh, the Fieldhouse report. Uh, me and Drew still have our uh podcast. Taking a hiatus for personal reasons, so thanks for, you know, mentioning that and, um, you know, giving us the opportunity to still have uh, you know, a voice and be on uh your podcast because this is all just fun for us. And that's why we do this, right? So. You're damn right. Go Cougs, man. Go Cougs, baby. Go Cougs. And uh just remember, life's too short. Gas up your boys. Show notes: We have Cougar Carlson of the FieldHouse Report joining us to talk through the WSU football Spring and what he saw.