Matt Weiner (@mattweiner20) – Football beat reporter
After an hour-long meeting that could’ve been settled with two emails, you walk over to the water cooler for a little chit-chat with coworkers. Immediately you find yourself waterboarded with drivel and personal tragedies. For some that’s fine, but not you. You’re someone who just wants to talk about Spartan football. I present to you: Water Cooler Talk. A column that supplies you with three (hopefully interesting) topics about SJSU football for the optimal shuck and jiving experience by a beat reporter inside the arena.
Did someone say ‘Flea Flicker?’
SJSU head coach Brent Brennan was shooting the bull with Sports information director Sky Kerstein, broadcaster Justin Allegri and myself following his press conference Tuesday afternoon.
He mentioned that he was expecting some form of trickery from the Vikings and as luck would have it he was right. Portland State pivoted from its regularly scheduled programming for one play.
Although Brennan couldn’t have imagined they would pull this out of their bag of tricks:
A flea flicker. From your own one-yard-line. Down 14-10. Unbelievable.
Credit to Portland State for rolling the dice and becoming the personification of ‘scared money don’t make money.’
But on the other hand … maybe this was the best time to attempt a flea flicker?
Alright, alright, alright just hear me out on this. I can already see the flaring of your nostrils and smoke coming out of your ears.
The whole point of a flea flicker is to catch the secondary by surprise, right? Well, what’s more surprising than attempting it from your own endzone?
SJSU cornerback Nehemia Shelton was completely caught off guard and PSU’s Nate Bennet whizzed by him. There was major separation here.
If the ball was thrown farther, the Vikings would’ve had *checks notes* the first ever flea flicker to go for a 99-yard touchdown.
I lied. I didn’t look that one up. There’s just no way a team has done that before.
And even though it didn’t go for six at the time, Portland State would cash in later to take a 17-14 lead.
This was truly college football in its finest form.
Pure mayhem and nonsensical decision-making that later proved to make complete sense.
Cup of Elijah runneth over
Standing at an intimidating 6-foot-5-inches, with the wingspan of a bird of prey, Elijah Cooks just looks like a handful.
And when the ball is snapped he becomes one.
This 12-yard pitch was one of several key plays made by the Nevada transfer in the Spartans’ 21-17 win over Portland State.
Cooks was Chevan Cordeiro’s most sought-after receiver, reeling in six catches for 123 yards on nine targets.
“He [Cordeiro] has the trust in me and I have the trust in him,” said Cooks.
“I know going out there every time that I could be his first possible read so I have to run as fast as I can, get open, win right now because Chevan is looking for me.”
In my season preview, I compared Cooks to everyone’s favorite U.S. foreign relations ambassador, Dennis Rodman. Although they exist in different mediums, Cooks mirrors Rodman’s crisp footwork, then his grit and tenacity to position himself into snaring spirals out of the air.
Between the lines, he was sheer intensity with a dash of violence sprinkled on top. Outside of the lines, Cooks was sanguine.
After back-to-back touchdown drives early in the contest, the Spartans’ offense was caught in quicksand from the 14:05 point in the second quarter until Cordeiro’s game-winning keeper with 1:11 left.
“Even when we didn’t score every possession the offense was on the sidelines saying, ‘We are going to score a touchdown this drive,” said Cooks. “Never negative.”
That calm, unfazed nature began before the contest even started.
“It’s just having positive energy. Like ‘enjoy yourself,’” said Cooks.
“We play a child’s game honestly so you got to have fun with it. A lot of people don’t like to have fun with it so I like to enjoy myself being out there and know that I’m not going to be able to play this forever. I’m going to enjoy it.”
Cooks is now 58 yards and nine catches away from matching his combined totals from 2020 and 2021.
Give em time
Assembling a college football roster could feel like a perpetual game of Whac-A-Mole.
As soon as you have a veteran-heavy presence on essentially all units, three players will be on your starting offensive line who’ve never played a single snap of college football before.
Besides Chevan Cordeiro’s scrambles, one of which was a 32-yard rush into the end zone, the Spartan running game struggled mightily.
Runningbacks Kairee Robinson and Shamar Garret combined for 38 yards and 14 attempts for an average of 2.71 yards per carry.
This was one of offensive line coach Josh Oglesby’s biggest takeaways from the matchup.
“Obviously more consistency in the run game. A little bit of that was how the game unfolded.”
“There wasn’t really an opportunity to get into a rhythm running the football which was probably the most important thing when it comes to running the ball. Is just being able to establish that rhythm and continue to chip away at that rock.”
And the seven sacks Cordeiro took did show some cracks in the passing game as well.
The struggles were evident all night long as Portland State continually shrunk the pocket from a dog bowl to a soup can. But as Oglesby said, the only way to conquer inexperience is from experience.
With Auburn next up, the grace period for maturity is slim to none.
Baptism by fire it is.