The definition of offensive balance in football has been changing for a while, but Washington State coach Mike Leach is one of the more extreme examples. 

Take his team's 28-24 win over Utah in Week 5, for instance. The Cougars finished the game with zero rushing yards. Yes, zero. (Disclaimer: Wazzu did in fact run the ball. It actually finished with 13 yards on five carries from running back James Williams; the -13 yards came on kneel downs at the end of the game. Not that Williams' 2.6 yards per carry changes the narrative.) 

When asked about the team's offensive distribution, Leach offered a spin on his philosophy as only Leach can. 

"I want all of the positions to touch it," Leach said. "There's nothing balanced about 50 percent run, 50 percent pass, because that's 50 percent stupid." 

"Now, what is balanced is when you have five skill positions ... if all five of them are contributing to the offensive effort in a somewhat equal fashion, then that's balanced," he continued. "But this notion that, if you hand it to one guy 50 percent of the time and then you throw it to a combination of two guys the other 50 percent, that you're really balanced ... you probably pat yourself on the back and tell yourself that, and people have been doing that for decades. Well, you're delusional."  

To his point, Williams had three catches for 44 yards. So, yes, he was involved. In fact, 10 different players caught a pass against the Utes. Balance is finding as many different ways to do what you do well, and so many passes nowadays are essentially running plays. Balance is exploiting defensive weaknesses and sometimes that's not always in the box along the defensive front. 

Leach has never been known as a coach who fancies pounding the rock, though a couple of his offenses in the past few years have been effective at it. Still, winning a game with zero yards rushing is a double-take stat if there ever was one. It is not unprecedented, though. Wazzu also won a game at Arizona State in 2016 with -52 rushing yards, but that was nearly all due to quarterback Luke Falk being tackled in the backfield.

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