Huskies notes: Jimmy Lake addresses QB questions, discusses ZTF’s return, UW’s run game and more
The Washington Huskies are halfway through their regular season schedule, sitting at 2-4 and looking to regroup in their final six games.
Saturday night’s loss to visiting UCLA was UW’s second consecutive conference defeat, following their loss to Oregon State in Corvallis earlier this month.
“We’re disappointed,” UW coach Jimmy Lake said of the most recent 24-17 loss during his Monday morning meeting with the media. “We know there’s a few plays here or there, where if we make those plays and we stop a couple plays, then we have a different result. That’s why we’re back to work to change the result.
“We went back out there today and had a really good practice, and now we’ll have an opportunity to have a different result on Friday night.”
The Huskies will end this short practice week with a trip to Tucson, where they will meet winless Arizona at 7:30 p.m. Friday. Following that, UW has Stanford, Oregon, Arizona State, Colorado and Washington State remaining on the schedule.
Here are four more topics of note that were addressed during Lake’s press conference Monday:
The Huskies have played six games this season, and four have been decided in the fourth quarter or later, but only one of those has ended with a UW win
Montana scored the game-winning touchdown in UW’s shocking season-opening loss with more than 10 minutes to play, but the Huskies were in position to at least produce the tying score until an interception sealed the loss with 37 seconds left.
Sean McGrew produced the winning score for the Huskies in overtime against California in their Pac-12 opener, before Cameron Williams sealed their only conference win to date by forcing a fumble at the 1-yard line on Cal’s ensuing drive.
Oregon State ended a back-and-forth game against UW with the winning field goal as time expired.
UCLA completed the game-winning touchdown pass against the Huskies midway through the final quarter last weekend, capitalized on a late UW turnover and ran out the clock.
The commonality here?
All four games — including all three of UW’s conference games so far — were decided in the final moments and by only one score. Still, the Huskies are 1-3 in close finishes, with only the Cal game resulting in a win.
“Our players know that they’re right there on the doorstep, and we have to finish,” Lake said. “We have to make those plays when we’re down in the final minutes of a game. We’ve done it before, and we did it in 2020, and we’ve done it obviously this year. So, those guys know the taste of it. But, we’ve got to have the confidence and the willingness — which I know we have the willingness — to go out there and compete all the way to the end.
“And that’s what our guys have done. … They’ve fought all the way to the end, and now we can’t get discouraged that it hasn’t gone our way these last two weeks. We’ve got to keep pushing, keep pushing and keep working, and the result will go into our favor.”
Lake on the possibility of a quarterback change: ‘We are nowhere near that point right now’
Lake answered a similar question postgame Saturday, and his message was the same three days later when he was asked about the possibility of a quarterback change:
“We are nowhere near that point right now,” Lake said Monday. “ … If you go back to the last two games, we’re one, two plays away from being 3-0 in conference. And we’re so close, and we’ve got to keep working, we’ve got to keep getting better and make sure we can change those results.
“And so there’s not going to be a panic button pushed here where all the sudden we’re just going to be rotating in and guys out at certain positions, especially an important position like quarterback.”
Redshirt freshman Dylan Morris has now started 10 games behind center for the Huskies, including each of the four games of the shortened 2020 season, and the first six on UW’s schedule this fall.
In his second season, Morris has completed 60% of his passes with a 241 yards per game average that is fifth in the Pac-12, and has tossed eight touchdowns, but has also thrown a conference-leading eight interceptions. Two of those were against UCLA, including one on UW’s final offensive possession, which then gave the Bruins the chance to run out the final four minutes, 50 seconds of the game.
“There’s a lot that goes into an interception, and I know as soon as the interception is thrown obviously all the blame is on the quarterback’s stat line,” Lake said. “But, there’s a lot of different things that happen during an interception. It could be a missed protection, and he’s got somebody in his face, and now his arm gets hit and now it’s an underthrown ball. A tipped ball that should be caught by our pass catcher, and all of a sudden it gets tipped and gets deflected. Just a number of things that go on.
“Now, we know we have to protect the football better. Dylan knows that. We don’t want to go out there and throw interceptions. There’s some that are squarely on his shoulders, where he threw it and it was not a well-thrown ball. But, there’s some other ones where it doesn’t fall on his shoulders. It’s no secret in our building, we all know — we’ve got to protect the football. We’ve got to make sure we’re not turning the ball over on offense, and we’re trying to get the ball back on defense. We’ll continue to coach it and make sure we get better at it.”
The Huskies have two quarterbacks behind Morris in graduate transfer Patrick O’Brien and five-star true freshman Sam Huard, who are both listed as backups on the depth chart. Both quarterbacked one drive in UW’s rout of Arkansas State in Week 3 but have not appeared in a game since.
UW is searching for consistency in the run game at the halfway point … on both side of the ball
Six games into the season, the Huskies rank near the bottom of the conference in rushing offense (tied 10th, 111 yards per game) and defense (10th, 190.5), and Saturday’s loss to UCLA only impacted those numbers further.
Offensively, UW rushed for less than 100 yards for the fourth time this season, posting 83 — the program’s lowest rushing total in Pac-12 play — against UCLA’s conference-best run defense.
The Huskies were the fourth team the Bruins have held to double-digits rushing this season, as UW averaged only 2.7 yards per carry.
“We have to make sure obviously schematically we’re setting our guys up for success,” Lake said. “Coaches, it always starts with us first. Then we have to go out there and execute. UCLA is the top run defense in our conference right now. We actually got some more yards on them than most opponents have in 2021. But, still it wasn’t good enough. But, it was one of the better run games against that defense all year long.
“But again, we just have to continue to force the issue. We have to set up schematically better, and of course we have to block and we have to run.”
Beyond the Bruins, though, UW’s troubles in the running game have become a trend the first six contests. The Huskies are averaging 3.4 yards per carry, which ranks 11th in the conference, just ahead of Arizona (3.3), and have produced only one 100-yard rusher in a single game this season, when McGrew tallied 104 yards against Oregon State.
On the defensive side, the Huskies have had as much difficulty containing opponents on the ground. UCLA piled up 237 yards against UW, becoming the fourth team to rush for 125-plus yards against the Huskies this season, and third to surpass 200 yards. Michigan piled up 343 yards against UW back in Week 2, and Oregon State 242 yards in Week 5.
“We have to get way better,” Lake said. “It’s been an emphasis for the last month, and it’s going to continue to be an emphasis. We have to get better. We have to tackle better. We have to get off blocks. We have to read our keys better. It starts in practice.
“We have to go put a better result this Friday night at stopping the run. If we stop the run better in these last few games, then we’re going to give our offense more of an opportunity to be on the field more and score some points, and of course we’re going to keep points off the board. It’s something we’re continuing to try to get better at and we have to fix, and it starts with us as coaches.”
All-American linebacker Zion Tupuola-Fetui made his season debut against UCLA, and could play a bigger role this week
During his Monday press conference last week, Lake announced Tupuola-Fetui, less than six months after he tore his left Achilles tendon, had returned to full padded practice and “looked great,” leaving everyone to wonder if the sophomore outside linebacker might play against the Bruins.
Tupuola-Fetui did indeed make his season debut on UW’s opening defensive series, and played 10 snaps total, per Pro Football Focus. Even playing limited reps in his first game since December — he started all four for the Huskies in 2020 and piled up seven sacks on his way to All-American and All-Pac-12 honors — Tupuola-Fetui made a difference on the snaps he did play, recording three quarterback hurries of Dorian Thompson-Robinson and one quarterback hit. Lake said he would assess Tupuola-Fetui’s return to the field with “flying colors.”
“And I probably would have said that with him just taking one rep,” he said. “There’s not many people that can come back from that injury in six months and go out there and play in a college football game at that level.
“He played, he had 10 reps, had a bunch of quarterback hurries, he was effective in rushing the quarterback. … He came out of the game healthy and I would expect him to have more plays this Friday night.”
This story was originally published October 18, 2021 at 5:27 PM.
