SEATTLE — Missed tackles, big plays, and another big second half for an opposing offense.
Saturday’s 44-10 loss to Oregon featured many of the worst elements of Washington’s 2007 defense. With another potent, albeit drastically different, offense coming to Seattle Saturday, might the Huskies defenders be thinking, “Here we go again.”
“No, not at all,” said junior linebacker Donald Butler. “I won’t allow that, to be honest with you. This is a different team this year, that’s the bottom line.”
And despite a rough opening game, that seems to be the belief this defense is carrying into its home opener against Brigham Young.
“I’m still really confident in our defense and our team,” said sophomore linebacker Mason Foster. “Certain times, that’s just the way the cookie crumbles. Sometimes things don’t turn out how you want them to, but you’ve just got to rebound.”
The Huskies hope that rebound comes against the 15th-ranked Cougars, showing that the 2008 defense isn’t headed down the same path as the 2007 squad.
“Coming home, a big home opener against a highly-ranked team, it would be great to show the fans that we’re a better team than that,” said Foster. “A big win at home would really start our season off right. It can’t get any better than that.”
Butler insists that the collapse against Oregon was different than what happened last year. He said it was more a case of a few mental lapses leading to big plays rather than a total collapse of the defense.
“There’s a difference this year,” he said. “Trust me, there’s a difference.”
First-year defensive coordinator Ed Donatell has been taking a positive approach to coaching throughout spring football and fall camp, and said one bad game won’t change that approach.
“We just started,” he said. “We’re teaching, and every time that something doesn’t go right, it’s a great opportunity to teach. You can take it one way or another as a coach. ‘Oh I can teach something out of that,’ or ‘Oh, that went bad.’ I choose to say let’s teach. If I tell it to that guy correctly, he’ll do it for me. That’s what I always teach.”
One thing Donatell figures to be teaching more of this week is tackling, something the Huskies struggled with at times against Oregon.
“It’s one of those things we’ve addressed this week,” said safety Tripper Johnson. “We did miss some tackles, myself included. We’ve got to do better in practice. We’ve got to go game speed and we’ve got to wrap up… It’s a big, big issue this week, make sure you wrap up, make sure you set your feet. As a team as a whole we were all kind of leaving our feet, kind of lunging and diving at guys. It’s been addressed and I defensively think we’ll be better at that.”
While the defense works on fundamentals such as tackling, it must also prepare this week for a very different opponent, which, based on last week’s result, might be a good thing. BYU moves the ball in a much more traditional fashion, using a two-back, pro-style offense. In their 41-17 victory over Northern Iowa last weekend, junior quarterback Max Hall passed for 486 yards, including 213 to tight end Dennis Pitta.
“That’s one of the neat things about college football, the challenge of shifting gears,” said Donatell. “If you like challenges, it’s a great spot. This looks a little more like a pro style. And they are very good. Probably they look too much like a pro team. They’re very efficient and they obviously have a system.”
Facing a different and more conventional offense could help the Huskies, as BYU won’t have a very good idea what to expect from Donatell’s defense.
“Oregon really doesn’t do anything that we do, so you’ve just got to try to get a feel of what Washington’s trying to do and what their defensive schemes are and try to apply our offense to that,” said Hall.
And despite a mixed showing against Oregon, Washington’s defense will be a challenge for the Cougars, offensive coordinator Robert Anae said. Anae, as one might expect from an opposing coach, heaped praise on the Huskies’ defense and said he expects a much stronger challenge than last weekend’s score might indicate.
“You make your biggest improvement from game one to game two,” he said. “So there’s all of that improvement is going into it, plus they’re at home. We look at this as a definite mountain to climb, not just some bump on the road. This is a huge challenge for us.”
The Huskies can only hope that Anae is right, and on Saturday, they plan to prove that a second-half collapse and a big night by an opposing offense won’t be the norm again this season.
“That one was a fluke,” Butler said. “We’ve definitely got to go in there with that mindset. We’ve got to put that behind us. It wasn’t how we wanted to start, but we’ve got to come out and show our home crowd that this is a different team this year.”
Contact Herald Writer John Boyle at jboyle@heraldnet.com. For more on University of Washington sports, check out the Huskies blog at heraldnet.com /huskiesblog
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
