Husky football coaching vacancies filled by Huff, Lubick
Published 1:30 am Friday, March 31, 2017
By TJ Cotterill
The News Tribune
One is from Boise State University, the other from the University of Oregon.
Not exactly the friendliest of rivalries for the Washington Huskies football team, but coach Chris Petersen needed two qualified coaches to fill some assistant coach vacancies left by Chris Strausser and Bush Hamdan — who each took jobs in the NFL after the Huskies’ Peach Bowl loss to Alabama.
So Petersen hired one coach who spent eight years with him at Boise State, and another he’s squared off against at Oregon.
“What’s so funny — I show up and it was like ‘same old,’” said first-year offensive line coach Scott Huff, wearing a purple UW hat and sunglasses Friday morning. He took over for Strausser, his former offensive line coach who is now with the Denver Broncos.
“Change the player and changed the stadium and the facilities and the city, but the rest of it is very familiar,” Huff said.
Lubick, who was the Ducks’ offensive coordinator last season, takes over as UW’s wide receivers coach, co-offensive coordinator and respected recruiter.
How many of these UW players had Lubick recruited in the past?
“A lot — and I’m glad they came here, now,” Lubick said with a smile. “At the time I wasn’t.
“There are a whole bunch of reasons Washington has gone in this direction and recruiting is one of them. I think they’ve done a really good job. It’s one thing to get them here and it’s another to develop them, and I think they’ve done both.”
Lubick replaced Hamdan, who was hired as the quarterbacks coach for the Atlanta Falcons.
This is Lubick’s fourth job in five months. He was let go along with Mark Helfrich and the rest of Oregon’s coaching staff at the end of the season, and he then took over as the receivers coach at Ole Miss. Less than two weeks later, he accepted a job at Baylor as co-offensive coordinator before landing at UW.
He said so far he’s been most impressed with returning receivers Dante Pettis and Federal Way graduate Chico McClatcher.
“I was a fan of playing against those guys — Dante and Chico,” Lubick said. “You can see why they are very good.”
Petersen had Huff on staff for each of his eight years as Boise State’s coach, and that was after Huff started 40 games as the Broncos center from 1999-2002 — with Petersen being BSU’s offensive coordinator Huff’s final two playing years.
Huff was the offensive line coach from 2014-16 for BSU and took on co-offensive coordinator duties his final season — when his line was a semifinalist for the Joe Moore Award, given to the top O-line in the nation.
He said that he and Strausser are close friends from when Strausser was his offensive line coach.
“Every once in a while Coach Strausser would have me on the headset with Coach Pete and I would tell him to run the ball,” Huff laughed.
“(Petersen) has been awesome to me and my family and I couldn’t be more excited to work for him again. … He’s a great person. What you see is what you get. There’s nothing fake about him and he’s going to hold you accountable. He’s awesome. I’m a huge fan.”
Trey Adams, Andrew Kirkland, Coleman Shelton, Nick Harris and Kaleb McGary have gotten the most first-team reps, from left to right, along the offensive line so far.
Huff said he’s been working especially with Shelton at center.
“That’s probably the position I know I lean on the most because I was a former center myself,” Huff said. “I know just how important they are and being the field general out there.”
