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Mike Leach: It's '50 percent stupid' to have a 50/50 split of rushes and passes

nick bromberg
College football and motorsports writer
Washington State head coach Mike Leach likes to have his teams throw the ball. A lot. (AP Photo/Young Kwak)
Washington State head coach Mike Leach likes to have his teams throw the ball. A lot. (AP Photo/Young Kwak)

You will be unsurprised to learn that Washington State coach Mike Leach does not define offensive balance as throwing the ball and running the ball a relatively equal number of times.

Leach’s Cougars had exactly zero yards rushing in a win over Utah on Saturday. So, naturally, the topic of what offensive balance in Leach’s pass-happy system came up in his Monday press conference. He said his team’s offensive effort was “balanced” despite the lack of rushing yards and explained why.

“I want all the positions to touch it. There’s nothing balanced about 50 percent run and 50 percent pass. Because that’s 50 percent stupid. Now what is balanced is when you have five skill positions and all five are contributing to the offensive effort in a somewhat equal fashion, then that’s balanced. But this notion that if you hand it to one guy 50 percent of the time and you throw it to a combination of two guys the other 50 percent of the time and you’re balanced and you proudly pat yourself on the back and tell yourself that — and people have been doing that for decades — well you’re delusional.”

Washington State quarterback Gardner Minshew threw the ball 56 times in the 36-34 win. The team officially had 13 rushing attempts though the number was fewer than that. Sacks are counted as rushing attempts in college football. The team’s leading rusher was James Williams, who had five carries for 13 yards.

As we noted Saturday in our Winners and Losers column, it’s not the first time that a Leach-coached team has won a game with a terrible rushing performance. The Cougars had either -38 or -52 rushing yards depending on which box score you find in a 37-32 win over Arizona State in 2016. But, again, that total is a tad skewed. QB Luke Falk was listed as having 10 rushes for -61 yards in that game due to sacks. So while it’s indisputable that Leach loves to throw the ball more than most anyone else, his definition of balance doesn’t get much help from the way college football tabulates statistics.

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Nick Bromberg is a writer for Yahoo Sports.

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