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The Monday morning quarterback Some random thoughts about a rinky-dink performance By: Malamute, 1 September 2003
Some of the good: -- The punting game looks solid in the hands of Garth Erickson. Evan Knudson and Sean Douglas handled the kicking chores ably. Taking time to develop, the freshman Douglas has much potential. In the haberdashery department, the new road uniforms with their purple striping clearly win over last year's barely-visible gold striping. Contrast those with Oregon’s tawdry road uniforms, which are bright yellow, I think. For a first game, the Dawgs were relatively error free, with a paucity of penalties and mistakes (no fumbles, no interceptions) to mar the night. Surprisingly, no punts were blocked, although Knudson suffered a blocked field goal. Scoring-wise, the Huskies won the last half, 9-7. Tossing out the Buckeyes scoring runs of 23, 11, and 15 yards--two of them by QB Craig Krenzel--the Bucks averaged 2.3 yards per running attempt. Some of the bad: -- The final score could have been much worse for Gilbs' dawgs, who were bludgeoned, battered, bruised, and toyed with almost obscenely. Not turning the ball over via interception or fumble kept the score closer for the Huskies than it should have been, considering the marked disparity in quality between the two teams. OSU should have forced some turnovers. “The quality of mercy is not strained…It blesseth him that gives and him that takes." In his debut has Huskies' head coach, a blessed Gilby willingly did the taking. Kudos go to Gilby and Jim Tressel (the OSU head coach) for keeping the score respectable, and not lopsided. Tressel, however, is more than happy with the nine points his team allowed the Dawgs, even though the Dawgs didn't deserve them. -- The loss of four wide receivers from last season’s team (Paul Arnold, Pat Reddick, Will Hooks, Jr., and Eddie Jackson) has turned last season’s one-dimensional offense into a half-dimensional offense—at least until one or more of Washington’s true freshmen receivers step to the fore. When Gilby pulled WRs Charles Frederick and Reggie Williams for a breather, offensive coordinator Tom Pettas was forced to call a draw play. -- There is no appreciable depth at running back, at least until Chris Singleton (broken foot) and Zach Tuiasosopo (upcoming court case) return to the lineup. Rich Alexis must do it all in upcoming key Pac-10 match-ups. However, we expect that Kenny James and Shelton Sampson will run well against Indiana, Nevada, Idaho and Stanford. Both James and Sampson are not ready for prime time yet. -- Ironically, the loss of Keith Gilbertson as an assistant coach may be more damaging to the Huskies than the loss of Coach Neuheisel. Gilbertson is an excellent offensive coordinator and teacher of football fundamentals, rivaling Norm Chow at USC. As head coach, he can’t do everything. -- The image Gilbertson conveyed on national television went swimmingly until the cameras caught him chewing out TE Joe Toledo (photo above) after a motion penalty. The game was hopelessly lost then, and it seemed as if Toledo was taking the blame. I know that Gilby has coached tight-ends before, but why not leave Toledo’s chastising to tight-ends’ Coach Scott Peuller? Of the players injured at the Olympia camp, Toledo—groin injury—worked the hardest on conditioning exercises. He rode a stationary bicycle hours on end, on some very warm days. I doubt if he’ll ever have to do any Bear Crawls after practice. Overcoming a groin injury is much harder for a large player. -- Since the departure of Rick Neuheisel, Bobby Hauck and Brent Myers--all nice guys--a kinder-and-gentler approach in the treatment of players has been traded for a boot-camp mentality. The coaches are doing a lot of yelling at practices. You wonder if the new mentality won’t become old hat after a few more losses this season, causing some of the players, who are trying hard, to bolt the team. -- Why on earth would a school that is coming off a controversial eighty-sixing of its former football coach want to subject itself to a mismatch by playing the defending national champion on its own home turf to start its season? It’s all about money, and the decision to play the game was made years ago by the schedule makers who were wearing dollar-colored glasses at the time. However, the pounding the Huskies took on national television can only hurt recruiting and, in the long run, will affect the Huskies at the gate as fair-weather fans dump their season tickets. Ticket prices are rising while the quality of the product is diminishing. -- At Olympia, as we all drowned in Husky superlatives, I stunned KJR's Softy Mahler by saying that the Dawgs were an 8-5 team at best, if you count a bowl game. J In its remaining games, the UW could easily lose to UCLA, Oregon State, USC and Oregon. I’m worried about the road game with Arizona game now. Fortunately for Dawg fans, I'm not an expert on football. -- Some quotes from Bob Condotta of the Seattle Times: “UW is 8-10 in its last 18 games, its worst 18-game stretch since going 7-11 from the end of 1997 to the beginning of 1999. “And for only the third time in school history, the Huskies didn't get a single rushing first down (the other occasions came at USC in 1989 and at UCLA in 2001). “In its past 10 games, UW has 484 net rushing yards on 325 carries — this from a school that as recently as 1996 saw one running back (Corey Dillon) rush for 222 yards in a single quarter. That's an average of 1.4 yards per attempt.” |
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Like almost everything
in life, there is some good and bad to go along with the bludgeoning your alma
mater just took on a football Saturday. Unfortunately, with the Huskies’ 28-9
loss to the defending national champion Buckeyes, the good is heavily outweighed
by the bad. Not much good can be said about the Huskies because they have a long
way to go before they play "acceptable" Husky football. (TE Joe Toledo on the
left; an unfair pillorying?).