With no game this weekend and a three-game losing streak fresh on everyone’s mind, now seems as good a time as any to ask some questions.
What if the Huskies struggle the rest of the way and finish, oh, I don’t know, 5-8 and miss a bowl game for the fifth straight year? Then what? Is it time to panic? Probably not considering how difficult Washington’s schedule looked at the beginning of the season, and how difficult it still looks after five weeks.
Should coach Tyrone Willingham be on the hot seat? Probably not considering, again, how tough this year’s schedule is. A five-win season this year is not a step back from last year’s 5-7 campaign. Willingham has this team believing in itself. He has the players fighting to the end every week, something some of the teams in recent years didn’t do.
“They were ready for us,” USC center Matt Spanos said after last week’s 27-24 win over the Huskies. “They were well prepared, they had a good game plan, and they did their thing. Those guys are great players, they went full speed and worked hard every down, so that didn’t surprise me at all.”
After five weeks, I can’t quite figure this Husky team out. Was Syracuse that bad or did the Huskies play a great game in their season opener? Probably a little bit of both. Have Washington’s past three opponents been that good on defense, or should fans be legitimately concerned about the UW offense? Again, probably a little of both. At this point, three more wins wouldn’t shock me, nor would six. We just don’t know enough about this team yet.
Think of this season as a two-part series. The first chapter, which concluded with the three-point loss to top-ranked USC and a 2-3 record, was about as good as anyone should reasonably have expected (Marcel Reece, “Mr. 13-0,” not included). Then again, after a 2-0 start, it’s tough to feel good about 2-3. As Willingham would say, they did some good things, and they did some bad things.
While none of the players will say they are happy with a 2-3 start — nor should they be — there are positives to take from it.
“We didn’t expect to lose any of these games, we expected to win all of them, so it’s disappointing, but I don’t think the morale is down because we did lose,” quarterback Jake Locker said.
This second chapter, the one that kicks off Oct. 13 in Tempe, Ariz., will be the telling part of the season. If the Huskies want to reach their stated goal of reaching a bowl game, they’ll need go 5-3 over their last eight games. That means beating all of their currently unranked opponents: Arizona, Stanford, Oregon State and Washington State, and upsetting either Arizona State, Oregon, Cal or Hawaii.
It’s in the second chapter that we will find out just how good USC and UCLA’s running backs are, or conversely, just how bad Washington’s tackling is. It’s in the second chapter that we’ll find out if the Huskies’ offense is that bad, or if USC, UCLA and Ohio State are just that good defensively. It’s in the second chapter that we’ll learn just how much Locker has learned.
“We’ve played some really good teams these first five weeks, and we’re going to play real good teams the next eight weeks,” Locker said. “But I feel like the adjustment has been … it’s been difficult. It’s a fast game, a lot of things are going on when you’re out there. But each week you definitely do learn something. You’re able to take something away from each passing game and you just improve on those little things and that makes your game that much better.”
After five weeks, the highs have been perhaps too high, and the lows maybe too low. The optimism was rampant after two weeks. The Jake Locker Lovefest was already in full swing, and the Huskies were 2-0. In retrospect, we can see that Syracuse (and I don’t care if the Orange did beat Louisville) is terrible, and that Boise State is not the national power it was last season.
Conversely, the reaction to the three losses probably has been unnecessarily harsh. Ohio State, UCLA and USC are three good defenses, so before everyone starts campaigning to fire offensive coordinator Tim Lappano and bench tailback Louis Rankin, let’s wait and see how they do in these next few games. The defense absolutely needs to tackle better, but it’s certainly not fair to write the players off as no-talent hacks.
This week, a week without Husky football, feels like a good time to find some middle ground. To find some perspective.
So be prepared Husky fans, the second chapter begins next week.
Prepared for what? I’m still not sure about that.
Contact Herald Writer John Boyle at jboyle@heraldnet.com. For more on University of Washington athletics, check out his Huskies blog at www.heraldnet.com /huskiesblog.
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