By Todd Milles
The News Tribune
SEATTLE — These days, the University of Washington has punt return fever.
Through three games, Dante Pettis leads all FBS returners with a whopping 38.8 yard average per punt return.
But that is not what is capturing people’s imagination. In each game, Pettis has returned a punt for a touchdown.
On Saturday, he took one back 77 yards against Fresno State in a 48-16 Huskies’ victory that tied two NCAA records. He matched Texas Tech’s Wes Welker (2000-03) and Oklahoma’s Antonio Perkins (2001-04) with his eighth career punt-return touchdown
He also joined Kansas State’s David Allen (1998) and North Carolina’s Ryan Switzer (2003) as the only men to return a punt for a score in three consecutive games.
Even normally-colorless UW coach Chris Petersen referred to all of it as the “Dante Pettis Show” after the game Saturday night.
“Pettis has, to me, gone to a different level,” Colorado coach Mike MacIntyre told reporters in Boulder after practice Monday.
It is MacIntyre’s and the Buffaloes’ responsibility to keep Pettis contained as the two teams meet in a rematch of last year’s Pac-12 championship game Saturday in Boulder.
One of the first questions reporters pressed MacIntrye on was whether or not the Buffaloes would even kick in Petts’ direction.
“We’ll see what we’re going to do on that,” MacIntyre said. “We’ll see.”
It all sort of comes full circle for Pettis this Saturday. As a true freshman in 2014, not only did the San Clemente, California, product score his first touchdown in Boulder (28-yard catch), he recoreded his first career punt-return score (87-yarder) in a 38-23 UW victory.
Equally amazing about all of Pettis’ returns is how clean the rest of the unit has been in springing openings for him. Never in his career has a punt-return touchdown been called back because of a penalty.
“We spend a lot of time trying to work on that, talk about that, show clips like that,” Petersen said during his weekly press conference Monday at the Founders Club at Hec Edmndson Pavilion.
“It’s hard to practice that close to live (speed) at all. If you’re not practicing live, then how do you make great decisions? Because that’s when these split-second decisions of pulling off and not making a block (happen).”
Petersen was also asked if he can enjoy these types of high-level performances by one player while they are happening.
“To me, it’s all the same,” Petersen said. “I am not rooting one thing more than the other. I want us to do well in all of it.”
Extra points
Petersen declined to give any injury updates on tight end Drew Sample (leg), or wide receivers Andre Baccellia and Chico McClatcher. None of the three played Saturday…Kickoff for the Sept. 30 game at Oregon State has been set for 5 p.m.
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