COMMENTARY: Trust Dickert: WSU’s O-line gradually improving

The Washington State offensive line has been a problem since the late Mike Leach left WSU in 2019.

Leach’s O-line’s were built for his innovative Air Raid offense, which produced plenty of high-scoring entertaining games.

While the Cougs had running backs like Max Borghi who carved out a name for themselves in the Wazzu backfield, the passing game was the paramount process of the Air Raid scheme and thus everything that WSU did was done to enable that. Especially the recruitment, development, scheme and performance of the offensive line.

Let’s take a look at the Cougars’ O-line over the last several years.

Leach and his offensive line coaches during his nine seasons on the Palouse recruited linemen with his specific scheme in mind. It led to the recruitment of future NFL players Joe Dahl, Andre Dillard and Abraham Lucas.

Dahl, a Spokane native, played five years for the Detroit Lions; Dillard, out of Woodniville, Wash., is in his sixth season in the NFL and Lucas is in Year 3 with the Seahawks.

WSU starting center Devin Kylany’s first day of school in January 2020 was Leach’s last day in Pullman.

While the majority of WSU’s coaches left, a couple strength and conditioning coaches remained and Kylany, who grew up in Lake Stevens as a WSU fan thanks to his Coug aunt and uncle, elected to stay.

Former WSU coach Nick Rolovich and offensive line coach Mark Weber led the Cougs for the next one-and-a-half years, and Kylany dealt with multiple injuries during a tumultuous time for WSU. The pandemic frequently shut down workouts and Rolovich and Weber were terminated for not following the state of Washington’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate in October 2021.

Rolovich left WSU after a year and a half with a grand total of six recruited offensive linemen.

When current WSU coach Jake Dickert took over the program, one of the first things he did was bring Clay McGuire back to the Palouse as offensive line coach — a post he held from 2012–17.

McGuire left to rejoin the coaching staff of his alma mater Texas Tech two years later. With one former Red Raider lineman out the door, Dickert hired former Texas Tech All-American center Jared Kaster as his 2024 O-line coach.

“(Kaster) is all about fundamentals. He is preaching that more than anything else, and just knows that when we know what we’re doing and how we’re supposed to do it, that’s when we’re going to play fast and free. Come off the ball, attack defenses and be able to control what we want to do,” Kylany said.

While Kaster’s teachings and impact have been positive, they have not insulated WSU’s veteran offensive line from the struggles of facing a dominant defensive front.

The Cougs excelled against Portland State, not allowing a sack, whereas Texas Tech and Washington disrupted the pocket, but couldn’t quite catch WSU quarterback John Mateer as the sophomore signal-caller evaded defenders with his legs, thanks to his own ingenuity and the smart blocks of his line.

The O-line knows its job is not over when Mateer crosses the line of scrimmage and has stayed engaged in plays until the whistle, paving the way for season-defining moments, such as Mateer’s WSU QB-best 197 rushing yards versus Texas Tech and two rushing touchdowns, including one on third-and-20 in the Apple Cup.

While Mateer and the Cougar line found success early in the season, the nationally-ranked Boise State Broncos provided a whole other level for the Cougs, sacking Mateer seven times.

Thanks to casually having the best player in the nation in Ashton Jeanty running the rock and racking up 250 yards and four touchdowns, the Broncos forced WSU to play from behind and successfully stopped Mateer.

Other than an opening-play 52-yard run, Mateer was kept mostly in check, though his final rushing line of 28 yards was very much marred by the fact that he was sacked seven times, some of the sacks for a double-digit loss of yards.

The Cougs also came up empty handed on third-and-1 and fourth-and-inches in the third quarter on their own 27-yard line with the line unable to give Cougar running back Wayshawn Parker or Mateer any space.

Kylany said on each play it seemed that a different lineman made some sort of lapse in execution or mistake. The Cougs were easing right tackle Fa’alili Fa’amoe back onto the line and rotating him with Christian Hilborn, who started the first four games of the season at right tackle.

Left guard Rod Tialavea remained in the game and is competing for the LG spot with Hilborn this week.

Dickert said he would cement a starting five going into the Fresno State game this weekend.

While it is true that the Cougars O-line consisting of left tackle Esa Pole, Tialavea, Kylany, right guard Brock Dieu, Hilborn and Fa’amoe has been far from perfect, they have had much more success than in either of Dickert’s first two years following the graduation of NFL players Lucas and center Liam Ryan.

Dickert said he inherited “a mess” from the previous staff along the offensive line and has been candid about his vision for developing a group that is not a carbon copy of the made-for-Air Raid front five that Leach ran. Dickert has said he is building a versatile line that can support rushing and passing.

We have seen spurts of that this year, especially with Mateer’s athleticism making up for any lapses with his legs.

“The challenge is that there’s no quick solution,” Dickert said. “There’s a developmental process, there’s a training room, there’s the weight room, there’s technique, there’s been multiple offensive line coaches. It’s just taking that next step. But we feel like that is a dominant group.”

The positive side to this is two-fold. First, the Cougars offensive line that debuts Saturday versus Fresno State will have the chance to gel for the rest of the season with Fa’amoe holding down the fort at right tackle and, most likely, three-year-starter Hilborn clearing a path for the Cougs at left guard while Pole, Dieu and Kylany continue to improve.

“I’m just not really having to coach effort,“ Kaster said in August. “You can see, it’s a group that wants to put the program on their shoulders.”

The Cougars offensive line is composed of veteran players who have the maturity to attack each day with the right mindset and a vocal and passionate leader putting on the pads with them in Kylany.

In his first year as a starter, Kylany was named a captain and has lived up to that responsibility by modeling the kind of work ethic that Dickert expects of his players.

“He’s the voice of the offense,” Dickert said. “He and John (Mateer); I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. I love his work ethic. He’s an example guy. He brings energy — just one of those guys that really loves playing ball, and that isn’t just Saturdays, that’s every day.”

While the offensive line is far from perfect, most O-lines in a coach’s first several years take time to mature.

The blue-blood teams with a tradition of excellence in the trenches — or the money to manufacture it — may sustain success between coaching tenures, but schools like WSU are reliant on the coaches to build and sustain winning traditions, like how Leach and his staff produced several NFL offensive linemen who excelled in pass blocking.

Even that winning tradition took several years to develop. Leach’s first Cougar O-line allowed 57 sacks in 2012. That number dropped to 36 in 2013 and 32 in 2014.

In Dickert’s first full-year at the helm, the Cougs allowed 46 sacks and saw that number drop to 38 in 2023.

In 2024, WSU has allowed 13 sacks through five games, with seven of those at the hands of Boise State. That’s an average of 2.6 sacks per game.

Even with an inflated 2.6 sacks per game average, WSU is on pace to allow 31.2 sacks this year — the lowest since 2021 (30 sacks allowed) when the Cougs had two NFL players along their line.

The Air Raids of the mid 2010s allowed between 30-40 sacks per season.

In the magical year of 2018 when WSU won a school-best 11 games, the Cougs allowed 13 sacks all year.

Yes, WSU’s strength of schedule will be a factor in how the O-line finishes the season with all Mountain West opponents and Oregon State on its schedule. And while that may affect the perception, know that the Cougars allowed just six sacks in a four-game stretch that included the Big 12’s Texas Tech and the Big Ten’s UW.

That’s nothing to scoff at.

Dickert’s vision for the offensive line is falling into place and the real fruits of his and Kaster’s recruitment will take several more years to sit in the “slow cooker” as Dickert likes to say, before they make a difference on the field.

Dickert has provided a steady, calming presence on a Cougar football ship rocked by an ocean of chaos for the last five years. While this can be said for a number of things Dickert has dealt with at WSU, it proves true for the offensive line too and should give Coug fans a great deal of confidence in the future of this crucial position group.

Taylor can be reached at 208-848-2268, staylor@lmtribune.com or on X (formerly Twitter) @Sam_C_Taylor.