Over the past year I've thought a fair amount about the different things that go into winning football games and the loss today I think highlights some of these topics. I've decided there is a foundation and four pillars that are needed to sustain a successful college football program. It is on the coaches to successfully implement each of these areas. In the case of Washington we have a strong foundation, two pillars that are top notch, a third pillar that is strong, and a crumbling fourth pillar that leads to regular collapses, like today.
Culture is the foundation of any college football program. One of Petersen's strengths is the culture he brings to the program. On a 10 point scale we score a 9 for culture. The adults are in charge and the players have bought in. Every program tries to sell themselves as a family but the bond of the teams under Petersen actually seem to reflect that. This is something this program can and does sell to recruits, this is the players working hard in practice, this is the players trusting the coaches. This would be a 10 if we had better leaders and energy emerging during games.
Pillar 1 is recruiting. Without bringing in talent you will have a lower ceiling than your opponents. You can coach up your players to the maximum of their abilities and maybe that will take you further than a talented team with shit coaching, but to be a champion you have to bring in top talent to compete against the top talent. For Washington we are maybe a 7.5 in this area. We have been recruiting well in many positions and are approaching critical numbers of high caliber talent (e.g. 40 4*s metric) that can make us competitive with the best teams and the coaches definitely are good at evaluating who is high caliber. We still struggle in a number of ways in recruiting though. TSIO will tell you all you need to know but we have room for improvement here. Talent gaps at specific positions are clearly hitting us hard today though).
Pillar 2 is strength and conditioning. Owen's death marches were good until Nebraska invented S&C in 1969. Modern football programs try to maximize the physical capabilities of their players but we know that not all S&C programs are created equally. Whether it is Olympic lifts or hotdog eating competitions, we know that some of our previous S&C coaches were crap that left us undersized and prone to injuries. Under Socha our players have started to look the part and I am not sure why I wouldn't give him a 10/10.
Pillar 3 is coaching in practice. This is where players develop their skills and learn the mental parts of the game. Do our players not know how to tackle? Do they not know how to line up in position? That is why we practice and again, looking at past teams we know that not all coaches get this right. This is another one of our strengths. This is how Petersen really made his mark is by maximizing the talent from his low-grade recruits. Our past few years under Petersen haven't made a lot of mistakes, haven't whiffed on a lot of tackles, and have generally played sound football. This year our special teams have been pretty abysmal and kicking has been a historic problem area for Petersen so I'm going 8.5 here.
Pillar 4 is gameday coaching. This is why we suck. We have near-perfect scores to this point but we still lose games. Why? Because we fail to put our players in positions to succeed. When Kwiatkowski was DC I'd have maybe given us a 6 here but now I'm giving us a 2. We just plain suck at offense and always have. All offensive success has come because of our success in the other pillars/inheriting John Ross. We have regressed drastically with Lake calling the defense and while we obviously have taken a big step back on DL (past recruiting struggles) and LB (past and current recruiting struggles) we still have a great set of DBs that we underutilize. The rate at which we give up 3rd down conversions is a function of how we are playing our DBs and that can be changed. Our offense sucks and that is because Pete is arrogant and stubborn and refuses to adopt to a reasonable run-first offense that utilizes elements of confusion rather than being confusion-based. We need to move to a philosophy of trying to win instead of playing to not-lose. We need to ask our players to operate within their limitations. There are just a lot of fundamental flaws in how we approach games.
Of the 50 points available we get 37. I think 45 is a reasonable target (no idea how other teams like Bama or tOSU would grade out but I expect around here) and the low hanging fruit here is obviously in gameday coaching. This offseason Pete needs to a long-hard look at everything they are doing schematically and make personnel changes as needed to shore up this area. We do not put our players in a position to win games which is a real shame because we do almost every thing else really well. There is only one major area of weakness that we need to improve upon before we'll be a contender as long as we keep recruiting well and bring in talent at all positions. If Pete can get his act together here then he will be the coach we want him to be and I think he will be the coach he wants to be.
I like pictures so I made your great poast into a picture.
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That’s only 3.