Coach Baird on Husky Football

    Call it pay-back, call it meaningless, or in Cal’s case, call it in. Whatever, the Washington Huskies ended their initial year under Steve Sarkisian with by far their best effort of the season. Even before the game ended and the Huskies began celebrating their 42-10 thrashing of a nationally ranked and thoroughly overwhelmed Cal Bear team, the focus had already turned to the decision of Jake Locker on whether he will go or stay. (Let’s let that one rest here because the decision will be eventually be made and the program will move on no matter what he decides.)

    Those of you who read my stuff know I believe that the game of football is usually won by the teams the play good defense, run the ball on offense, and are solid in the kicking game.  Now I also harp on not turning the ball over and believe that good defense means stopping the run first and then attacking the quarterback in passing situations.  Against Cal, to end their season, the Huskies did all of the above and then some.

   The Huskies outrushed a good running team in the Bears, 177 to 81, and in doing so held them to over 100 yards less then the Bears had been averaging on the season. Of course, they also out passed them including 3 touchdown passes by the before mentioned Jake Locker. They had 25 first downs and held the Bears to 14.  They had 463 total yards to the Bears 296.

     When the Bears decided to throw the Huskies attacked their quarterback relentlessly and totaled 5 sacks and at least 8 other hits on their quarterback.  That was the second week in a row where they registered 5 sacks and 3 of them went to Daniel Teo’Nesheim who now leaves Washington as the all-time sack leader with 30 on his career.  The pass rush itself matched their total the week before against WSU and that continuous pressure on the passer was the major change in the Husky defense.

     Only one shanked punt and a long kick off return by Cal marred an otherwise good performance by the Husky special teams and no interceptions or lost fumbles meant they finished the game with a +2 in the turnover ratio by having forced 3 and recovering 2 of Cal’s fumbles.

    The Huskies played their best football of the season during their last two games which they won by a combined score of 72-10.  Now granted they shut out a really weak WSU team but Cal was nationally ranked at 8-3 and hoping for a good bowl before they waltzed into Husky Stadium and got throttled by the Dawgs.

    Now I couldn’t pick the Beaver/Duck game right and also missed on the USC/Arizona game but I got the one right that mattered most to me and seeing the Huskies play the way they did erased the disappointment of not going to a bowl game and having a winning season.  Regardless, the Washington Huskies produced one of the greatest turnarounds in the history of college football going from 0-12 to 5-7 and just as importantly brought back a disgruntled fanbase.

    Washington averaged more fans than any program in the conference besides the USC Trojans.  (UCLA regularly gives tickets away to inflate their crowds) Remember that neither of the LA schools has to compete with a local pro team. In fact only ASU in the Pac-10 does and they averaged less than 49,000 in their 80,000 seat stadium. Although the announced crowd at the UW/Cal game was 62,334, that was sold ticket and there were no where close to that many filled seats.  Still, those who were there got to see the finest game of the season by this year’s Husky team.

    Progress is the one of the most important criteria when evaluating a football program. How does you team play in the month of November when championships are won? Washington was 2-2, having lost to UCLA by 1 before getting soundly thumped by Oregon State 48-21.  That set up the Cougar and Bear  games with nothing to play for except pride and belief.  These Huskies answered the call with their two best games of the season.

    They did so by playing their best defense of the whole year, running the football, being solid in the kicking game and not turning the ball over.  It’s really a very simple formula for winning in the sport of football and was proven the very next day when the Seahawks beat the 49′ers.

   So ends the first season of the Steve Sarkisian era and there is every indication that his hiring is probably the best thing that has happened to Husky football in at least a decade. He has restored hope, he has implemented his sytem, he has changed the culture and he has taught a mindset that allowed his kids to have success.  They bought in and even from their first game proved they would be competitive.  With a break or two they may have even made a bowl game had they been able to beat UCLA, ASU, or Notre Dame. Of course, they could easily have lost to Arizona had it not been for a lucky break but this team played everyone tough and if the previous administrations had known anything about scheduling they would still have another game to play.

    Things don’t get any easier next year when the Huskies open with BYU, Syracuse and Nebraska. If you understand the importance of developing your team then you don’t schedule for money, you schedule for wins and that helps you get to a bowl and those extra 15 days of practice to develop your squad. Because of past administrative greed, Washington continues to play one of the toughest non-conference schedules in the country.

    Arizona played Central Michigan and Northern Arizona to start their season. Oregon State played Portland State and UNLV to start theirs. California played Maryland and Eastern Washington to start theirs. Then look at who Florida, Texas, and any other bowl bound team played and you’ll see the same scheduling philosophy.

Why, because your league games are so difficult its tough to end up with a winning record if you over schedule in your non-league games.  That is precisely why there are rarely any Pac-10 teams playing for all the marbles and probably won’t be unless someone makes an unbelievable run like we did in 1991. Coach Sarkisian has no say in who he plays but you can bet you will start seeing the Huskies adjusting their schedules down in the near future. If Scott Woodward, the Husky AD, was smart enough to hire a great young coach like Sarkisian, he is smart enough to understand how to help him have success. Too bad he wasn’t able to dump BYU or Nebraska for this coming year.

    Beating WSU and Cal so convincingly still ended their season on a positive note and the seniors who have endured all of these past 5 years are to be commended for their perserverence and for rebuilding their belief system. They and Steve Sarkisian have led this program out of the depths of despair and back onto the national football scene.

   The system is in place, the players believe in it, and the fans are backing it.  Now all they have to do is complete an already good recruiting class and continue their winning ways come next season.

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This entry was posted on Monday, December 7th, 2009 at 11:44 am by huskyfootball and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.