PULLMAN -- With a narrow defeat to Virginia last weekend, a game so crazy it could get its own Netflix documentary, Washington State did a few things. The Cougars collapsed in the fourth quarter. But their rushing attack roared to life. Their defense imposed its will, doing so for the second straight week against a ranked Power 4 foe.
But that result also did something different for WSU, for coach Jimmy Rogers. It handed him his fourth loss of the season. Prior to this fall, he hadn't experienced four losses in a regular season since 2019, which feels like a lifetime ago.
"It's the most I've lost in years," Rogers said.
In that way, Rogers and many of his assistant coaches are walking through the dark, feeling along the wall to keep themselves upright. This is new to Rogers, who with the exception of one season had spent his entire coaching career at FCS powerhouse South Dakota State, which doesn't do much losing. In Rogers' two years as head coach, 2023 and 2024, the Jackrabbits went a combined 27-3, winning the FCS national title in the first year and reaching the national semifinals in the second.
Even before that, when Rogers worked as defensive coordinator and coached linebackers, SDSU only won. In 2022, the Jackrabbits went 15-1 and won the national championship. The year prior, they went 11-4 and advanced to the semifinals. Absent a wonky 2020 covid season, the last time SDSU experienced anything resembling tough times was 2019, when the group's season ended in the first round of the FCS playoffs.
Fast forward half a decade and Rogers is in the middle of an entirely new experience: He has to navigate losing. The Cougars, 3-4 on the year, have dropped four of their last five. Some setbacks have looked more encouraging than others -- WSU's one-score loss to SEC power Ole Miss earlier this month rang a resoundingly positive tone -- but regardless of the scoreboard, the results have been new for Rogers and Co.
Which begs one question: How on earth is he managing something so new?
"I think taking it as, life's an average," Rogers said. "There's ups and there's downs. It's how you handle it. It's how you respond. It's never as good, it's never as bad. Even when you win games, you see things that are glaring mistakes that may drive you nuts, but you won, and so the winning kinda masks the initial pain until you watch the film.
"But if you just take it at all for a body of work, there's been plenty of games that I've felt like we've lost after we've won the game just based off of the execution inside of it, and wanting more of the execution and having a higher standard than what the actual results showed, maybe."
Translation: Rogers has such high expectations for himself, for a program operating in its own uncharted waters, that he hasn't been entirely happy with wins the Cougars have notched this fall. But maybe the most meaningful undertone here is this: Rogers is far more concerned with the process than the results. In other words, he puts more stock in the way his group plays than whatever the scoreboard might show when the clock runs out.
That might matter in a Washington State season like this. The Cougs have lost each of their last two games, one-score defeats to ranked opponents Ole Miss and Virginia, but those always figured to be their toughest games of the year. All told, they acquitted themselves well, leading the Cavaliers by two scores and going stride-for-stride with the Rebels the week prior.
What does that mean for the rest of WSU's season? At least ostensibly, they're encouraging results for the Cougars, who return home to host Toledo this weekend. The general sentiment has gone like so: Play like that in their remaining games -- against Toledo, Louisiana Tech, Oregon State and James Madison -- and the Cougs will wind up in a solid bowl game.
Can WSU deliver on that promise? That much might depend on how much Rogers and coaches believe in how their process affects results. Are they happy with how their defense played recently? What about their offense? They likely aren't satisfied with their offense, which scored only three points in a late-game meltdown that allowed Virginia to close the game on a 12-0 surge.
Thing is, Rogers and the assistants he brought from South Dakota State harbored the same kind of mentality with the Jackrabbits. For his part, Rogers never seems entirely thrilled. He's always looking for ways to improve, even after an early thumping of San Diego State, when Rogers said this in his opening postgame comments: "Need to not kill ourselves with some of the holding calls and some false starts, some situational things."
In simpler terms: Rogers is rarely completely happy with how his team plays, which likely serves him and the Cougars well in this situation, mired in a losing slide. It's new for Rogers. But he's shown a deft touch at making adjustments earlier this season. More of that may be in line now.
"There's definite things that we're gonna learn from and take from every single game," Rogers said. "But overall, I think it's really important to look at the game in itself, every single play and say, did you execute? Don't just live by the result because sometimes the result goes in your favor."