UW Football Week 8; at UA

[Fungo]

I feel my dream fading rapidly. Lake is going to survive this game.

[DavidGee24]

I feel my dream fading rapidly. Lake is going to survive this game.

Don't fret, we've got three guaranteed losses, then at Colorado which we'll be underdogs in, and then the Apple Cup against a team that won't be going Air Raid.

[DavidGee24]

Well, the boys end up winning with complete domination of the second half. Give Morris some credit, he threw some great deep balls to Bynum. Jimmy Lake still sucks.

[AZOldDawg]

Morris deserves credit for his fourth quarter throws but his instability will still kill us against good teams. Arizona played stupid in the second half.

[D-train]

18 point favs and need two late TDs and pic by a D lineman to squeak it out. Might be the least impressive win in program history.

[Michael K.]

They were down to one of the worst teams in D 1 due to the QB play. Hard for me to credit a guy for a comeback when he was the reason they had to come back. Comeback wins sound cool and all, but why do we reward guys that lead a team to a deficit by celebrating that they came back? Yipee, you only sucked for two and a half quarters....way to go! If they built a 21 to 0 lead and held on to win 21 to 17, the press acts like the world is ending, but flip that around and supposedly the team played well? Fuck that, Morris sucks, Lake sucks, Donovan REALLY sucks.

Morris is NOT a Pac 12 QB. Morris might not be a D 1 QB from what I have seen. The very fact that the coaches feel the need to point fingers EVERYWHERE else, to me...is telling. Either they know and are now afraid to admit it, or they are actually worse than even I think they are. Paint Dry Ty had very little talent. I am going to go out on a limb right now and say Ty Willingham would have beaten Montana and UCLA. Jimmy and his staff are THAT BAD.

[Michael K.]

With Arizona QB Will Plummer content to dink-and-dunk all night, the Huskies should’ve been able to key on the run and load the box. But even still, the Wildcats scratched and clawed their way to 218 rushing yards, getting 6-yard bursts by their running backs seemingly at will. As Times reporter Mike Vorel pointed out, Arizona’s longest run entering Friday night was 23 yards, before rattling off runs of 52 and 34 yards in the first half against Washington.

It isn't even shocking anymore. I don't care who you play, if you are going to play Jimmy Lake's bullshit style of defense? You better have Vita Vea, Danny Shelton and Greg Gaines up front. It is just like Pete Carroll....well, the LOB did it, so that is the only way to play!

Go back even further, even though the 2001 Mariners didn't even MAKE it to the WS, this ownership base decided they were the model for the next century. Who needs stars, Griffey Jr, A Rod, Big Unit....look what we did AFTER we got rid of them. Never mind that both Boone and Ichiro put up MVP numbers and Edgar was still Edgar...we don't need stars. Next? The longest playoff draught in North America! WTF is wrong with the teams I root for!

Pete Carroll, can't get out of his own way.
Mariners. Ugh
Huskies? Potentially the worst the hoop and football team have ever looked at the same time
Sonics?

FML

Speaking of beating competitive teams … Pac-12 Hotline columnist Jon Wilner points out the three opponents the Huskies have beat this season (Arkansas State, Cal and Arizona) have yet to win a single game. So while, yes, the Huskies have three wins, they aren’t exactly wins to write home about.

So, beat up on a FCS team, win in OT thanks to a missed FG and a fumble and then narrowly escape against the team with the longest losing streak in D 1 who is playing their 3rd string QB! Fuck it, let's give Mistake by the Lake a fucking extension right now!

[Michael K.]

But certainly not all of them, and perhaps not for long. The Huskies struggled far too mightily to put away an Arizona team that carried an 18-game losing streak (now 19 and counting), that hadn’t recorded a victory since the 2019 season, that came in as a 17-point underdog, that was unanimously regarded as the doormat of the Pac-12, and that was starting their third-string quarterback.

The hits just keep on coming. These quotes are from Times writers. The guys that would usually rather talk about what the players ate for dinner than be critical of the program.

[Michael K.]

This is an ongoing theme. Trey Adams is from my area, and from what I heard he has spoken a few times about an absolute lack of fire from everyone in the program. I thought it was just a case of Pete losing his desire, but it seems to be far worse than that.

“In the first half, we were lacking energy, pretty flat,’’ said wide receiver Terrell Bynum. “We knew if we could get one (big play), we’d keep it going. We just needed one spark.”

It was a synopsis of the potential of this Husky offense that too often this year has struggled to find rhythm and has been stifled by unimaginative play-calling. Perhaps it took impending doom to shake them out of their doldrums – though playing a team as feeble as Arizona certainly helped.

Unimaginative is the under statement of the year. I was screaming from the stands last week to spread them out for a change. NOPE, lets line up in a tight two TE set and slam our RBs head into the ass of our Guard. Fuck you Donovan, the dude is worse than the guy that hired him. As we walked to the light rail last week the screams from fans for Jimmy's head were rather loud. One guy laughed after one of my comments that I should go call plays. I don't disagree....I am in software sales, and I know more about offensive football than the Husky staff shows. That sounds arrogant, but for Christ's sake, how can you continue to run this offense and expect different results?

The victory, as relieving as it was, hardly was cause for much long-term satisfaction for the Huskies. It had looked in the first half like the kind of game that usually gets someone fired, particularly in the context of the bitterly disappointing Washington season that was already in progress. It’s hard to imagine that there wouldn’t have been repercussions if Arizona hadn’t self-destructed down the stretch.

So, we have three wins, against teams with a cumulative 0 and 17 mark, and that saves Jimmy's job!? If that is the case I wish they would have lost. They beat Ark State, a winless Cal team that missed a FG and fumbled at the two and came back against a 3rd string Qb to had AZ their 19 straight loss. How impressive.

What was particularly galling was that the game plan once again seemed devoid of imagination. Morris missed a series when he was shaken up on a sack early in the game, but freshman Sam Huard – who Lake said was scheduled to play Friday even before Morris’s injury, was relegated mostly to handing the ball off before Morris returned. The question of whether it’s time to turn the offense over to Huard with an eye on the future – now that the present is so damaged – may have been settled for the time being by Morris in the second half. He finished with 217 yards, two touchdowns and no interceptions on 13 of 21 passing.

My thoughts exactly. They covered their ass by not letting Huard sling it...because they would have looked even more stupid than they did for benching McGrew. Grown fucking men are ruining this program, and doing it willingly. The guy was "scheduled to play" and what, hand it off every snap he played? Dude, there are no bigger Husky fans than me, and if I was in Sam's life I would tell him to get the fuck out. Morris is a Freshman, and this staff is in love with him...so what is the point? Go somewhere, play your two years, maybe three, and go pro. It is NOT going to happen here.

It’s the other transfers — wide receiver Puka Nacua going to BYU, and quarterback Ethan Garbers going to UCLA — that should sting, even in the current climate. Those are the losses Jimmy Lake and Co. can’t continue to take.

Which is all to say, a UW football fan shouldn’t panic if Draco Bynum, or Mason West, or Noa Ngalu opts for the transfer portal (like backup kicker Tim Horn did last week).

But if Rome Odunze leaves, or Sav’ell Smalls leaves, or Jalen McMillan leaves, or Sam Huard leaves … well, that’s when we’ll raise the red flags.

They are all leaving, if they are smart.

It’s silly to assume, because Sam Huard is not currently a better quarterback than Dylan Morris — which, for the record, he isn’t — that he will never be. Though it may not be on the timeline UW football fans demand, Huard is developing. He’s improving. He’s growing. He’s receiving valuable backup reps. He’s digesting the playbook and learning how best to diagnose defenses, day by day.

Huard has wanted to play quarterback at the University of Washington his entire life. He verbally committed more than two years before he signed with the Huskies. Sheldon Cross, his head coach at Kennedy Catholic High School, told The Times this offseason that “there’s not a guy that cares about the Huskies and wants to do right by the Husky fans and lead them to national championships (more than Sam). It’s important to him. He just wants to do right by them (UW fans). It’s not like he feels those expectations from them. He has higher expectations to do good by them.”

So, with all that said, would he really want to transfer after losing a quarterback competition as a true freshman to a much more experienced player (which, by the way, was expected all along)?

He isn't currently a better QB. Jesus, I hate bullshit like this. Would it really be the first time Jimmy made a personnel decision that was wrong? I will go right back to McGrew. The simple fact that Huard was slated to play last night, got in and didn't get a chance to do anything? Sorry, that is telling. This staff is fucked up, and they know it. They also know if Huard had taken the field for Mighty Mouse Morris and lead us on a scoring drive? They would look even stupider than they already do.

Sorry, I think I have found all the Gold in the Times I can find for one day. What a disaster this program has become. But, at least we have 3 wins against three shitty teams, right?

[D-train]

Vorel is great. And yes when Larry Stone is critical, you are running a fucked up program.