Oct. 27—PULLMAN — Washington State may be battling a bevy of injuries on defense, but the team is set to get one key player back this weekend.
Junior defensive end Isaac Terrell is expected to be available for WSU’s road game against Oregon State on Saturday afternoon, coach Jimmy Rogers said Monday, indicating Terrell’s absence will last only one game. Terrell, a breakout star on the Cougs’ defense this fall, missed his group’s win over Toledo last weekend with an undisclosed injury.
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“Bobby should be good to go this week,” Rogers said of Terrell, who leads the team with 9.5 tackles for loss. “He’s gotta go through a protocol, but he’s he looks much better than he did last week.”
It’s a critical development for WSU’s defense, which has gotten a huge lift from Terrell — who’s been enjoying the best season of his career — this season. In the Cougars’ one-score loss to SEC power Ole Miss earlier this month, he registered four tackles for loss, the most by a WSU player in a game in eight years. He also has 4.5 sacks, by far the most on the team.
But things are a little murkier for other Cougars working through injuries. Veteran right tackle Christian Hilborn and his backup, Division II transfer Jaylin Caldwell, are both expected to miss Saturday’s game, Rogers said. That would be Hilborn’s fourth straight missed game and the second straight miss for Caldwell, who came out early of WSU’s loss to Virginia with his own injury on Oct. 18.
Caldwell was seen on crutches during warmups prior to the Cougars’ win over Toledo last weekend.
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With 45 games and 38 starts under his belt after Week 5 of this fall, Hilborn is one of the team’s most tenured players. He’s played all over the offensive line, but he’s found a niche the last couple years at tackle. It’s unclear when he suffered his injury, but because he was not seen in any discomfort in a Sept. 27 win over Colorado State, it’s likely it happened during WSU’s bye week, which came the following week.
Defensive tackles Mike Sandjo and Kaden Beatty are both expected to miss Saturday’s contest, Rogers said. Sandjo, who has not played since WSU’s win over Colorado State on Sept. 27, will miss his fourth straight game . Beatty appeared to have sustained an injury in the same game, and he has not played since either. Before last weekend’s game in Pullman, he was seen on a scooter, his foot in a walking boot.
The good news for the Cougars is that veteran defensive end Raam Stevenson is set to return to practice this week, according to Rogers, who said Stevenson’s availability is “still up in the air.” Stevenson exited early from WSU’s Oct. 11 loss to Ole Miss with an injury, costing the Cougs a seasoned pass rusher. He has one sack on the season.
From a big-picture perspective, Stevenson’s is just one of a barrage of injuries to befall the Cougars’ defensive line. Starter Max Baloun sustained a season-ending injury on Sept. 20.
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That prompts this question: How have the Cougars stayed afloat on defense? They’ve built remarkable depth on their defensive line, getting meaningful contributions from players who began the year further down the depth chart: Third-year sophomore Jack Janikowski logged a sack on Saturday, San Diego State transfer tackle Darrion Dalton has 1.5 tackles for loss and Cal Poly transfer Soni Finau posted two sacks against Colorado State.
On top of that, New Mexico State transfer defensive end Malaki Ta’ase tallied two pressures in a season-high 31 snaps against Toledo, and third-year sophomore Michael Hughes picked up three pressures in 29 snaps, also a season-high for him.
“I think you believe in them and you push them,” Rogers said. “It starts from the culture that (defensive line) coach (Jalon) Bibbs has created in that room. Coach Bibbs is really passionate about coaching these players and being really close with them and caring about them. I mean, I think he takes their lack of execution about as personal as it could probably get. And I think that’s a good sign as a as a coach, that you care so much about your players that when they fail, you feel it.
“He’s driven to push them day in and day out, and believe that if they’re gonna get into the game, they’re gonna win us the game. I think overall, when you treat all your players like that and you can see a future in them, they can see it in themselves, even when the maybe the world doesn’t, or they have doubt naturally inside. It’s you that’s gotta give them the confidence that they can go out and play.”
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Rogers goes long on explaining recruiting strategies
If Rogers has made one thing clear about the players he’s interested in recruiting, whether out of high school or the transfer portal, it’s this: He wants guys who care about the team. Guys who are OK with sacrificing personal gain for team success.
How does he identify players who have those kinds of values? And how has that changed with the impact of the transfer portal and NIL?
“They’re out there, though. Yeah, it’s changed,” Rogers said. “You also create it by showing how much you care about them, but yeah, it’s changed surely. You’re talking about the transfer portal and individual statistics. It used to be this: You used to have a little bit of selfish bone in you to say, ‘I had a great year. Maybe I’m worth this.’ Now you don’t have to think about that anymore. Somebody’s willing to call you to tell you how great you are, even though your season was average.
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“So somebody’s always willing to value you more than what you’re currently at. It happens across college football. It doesn’t mean that your value in which you’re getting paid is the same value of how you’re treated or what you’re seen as. You can get paid a lot of money to go somewhere else and be miserable because you don’t do the thing that you initially thought you played. Happens every year.”
Greg Woods can be reached at (509) 459-5587 or at gregw@spokesman.com.
