McGrath: Sark won't say it, but moral victory a worthy goal for Huskies

Football coaches are required, by tradition if not a pact sealed in blood, to disavow the premise of a moral victory.

“There is no such thing as a moral victory,” they always say. “I don’t even know what that means.”

A moral victory is making the best of an untenable predicament, losing without shame or a sense of regret for failing to exert maximum effort.

If it’s possible for a winning coach to vent displeasure over his team’s ragged performance, then it must be possible for a losing coach to take satisfaction over his team’s inspired performance. Only the satisfaction can’t be acknowledged, per coaching-fraternity rules.

When the Washington Huskies face Oregon on Saturday in Eugene, Ore., they’ll have no reasonable chance of beating the No. 1-ranked Ducks.

But there’s reason to watch, reason to care and reason to bring a measure of hope into a hopeless afternoon.

If the Huskies show up with the purpose they lacked last Saturday against Stanford – and it’s difficult to imagine them taking the field with less purpose – if they bring some energy into the first five minutes and sustain that energy through the final five minutes of the fourth quarter, if their defiance to roll over frustrates a powerhouse team determined to roll up the score, it will be a moral victory.

This is not to say that Oregon is unbeatable. Operating the same zone-read scheme with essentially the same players, Chip Kelly’s team lost twice last season – to Boise State in the opener, and to Ohio State in the Rose Bowl.

Both games revealed a simple blueprint for solving the Ducks’ hurry-up attack. Boise State hogged the ball for 42:38 minutes, Ohio State for 41:37.

Although Kelly is a mastermind tactician, he has yet to devise a touchdown play that begins with the Oregon defense on the field.

Keeping that defense on the field requires a balance of running and passing executed by an efficient quarterback. Against the Ducks, Boise State’s Kellen Moore didn’t accumulate his typical monster numbers – he finished 19-for-29, for 197 yards and a touchdown – but Moore was enough of a threat that Oregon had to honor his arm at the expense of concentrating on the running backs.

The Ducks’ defensive strategy in the Rose Bowl, by contrast, was to force 6-foot-6, 235-pound quarterback Terrelle Pryor into throwing more often than he usually does. Pryor was equal to the task, completing 23-of-37 for 266 yards and two touchdowns.

“The plan was to make him throw the ball,” defensive end Kenny Rowe told reporters afterward. “But when he threw it good, the plan didn’t go well.”

Thanks to Pryor’s ability to move the chains in the Rose Bowl, the Buckeyes limited Oregon to 53 plays on 10 possessions.

With a healthy Jake Locker at the top of his game – and last week, he was neither – the Huskies would figure to emulate the Boise State/Ohio State model of neutralizing the Ducks. But Locker will be on the sideline, recovering from a broken rib, and nobody should anticipate redshirt freshman Keith Price working miracles in his first collegiate start.

If Price is able to manage the UW offense with a minimum of muffed snaps, messy handoff exchanges and frantically called timeouts, Huskies fans should regard it as a pretty good day, no matter what the numbers on the scoreboard show.

If Price guides the offense to a couple of touchdown drives – and remember, these guys haven’t scored in almost 100 minutes – it will be an even better day.

And if the Huskies hang around long enough to prevent the Ducks from turning the game into a blowout, it will be the very definition of a moral victory: a defeat in the record book but a tangible indication of a collective heartbeat within a team that hasn’t shown a zest for full-contact football since midway through the second quarter at Arizona, 11 days ago.

Something else to consider about a moral victory at Oregon: The Ducks are riding a hassle-free track toward the national championship game.

They recently leapfrogged Auburn in the BCS standings thanks to their top rankings in the two opinion polls, with the Tigers holding the edge in the poll determined by various computer systems.

The computer poll, by BCS rule, doesn’t factor in margin of victory, an absurd decision meant to prevent teams from running up the score.

But the humans who vote in the other two polls can’t help but notice the difference between comprehensively impressive victories and indifferent, so-so, one-team-gets-by-because-of-a-huge-talent-advantage victories.

If the Huskies rally around their freshman quarterback while finding the Ducks yawning on Saturday, they could drag their interstate rival down a slight notch in the human polls. And with as many as eight teams – five undefeated – still jostling for two berths in the BCS title game, dragging the Ducks down, even a slight notch, is a worthy endeavor.

Still, the Huskies’ focus should be on their own preparation and motivation. With some forecasts calling for a game played in the mid-30s at Autzen Stadium – referring to the point spread, not the temperature – Steve Sarkisian’s team will achieve a moral victory if it competes for four quarters.

Should that happen, Sarkisian will dispute the idea of a moral victory with mock outrage. But when the cameras are turned off and he heads toward the bus, he’ll smile.

john.mcgrath@thenewstribune.com