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At the Crossroads: Evolve or Die
Tequilla
Member Posts: 19,825
There's a lot of narratives and commentary that has been going around in the last 12+ hours (paying the piper for shitty recruiting, team emotion, etc.) ... but to me, so much comes down to looking at a program on both sides of the ball that has stalled out and is at risk of needing to evolve or continue down the path towards being passed and irrelevant.
Everything in this program comes back to looking at the tenure of Don James ...
From 1977 to 1984, Washington finished either 1st or 2nd in the conference each season and never lost more than 2 conference games in a year:
1977: 8-4 (6-1) - Rose Bowl
1978: 7-4 (6-2)
1979: 9-3 (5-2) - Sun Bowl
1980: 9-3 (6-1) - Rose Bowl
1981: 10-2 (6-2) - Rose Bowl
1982: 10-2 (6-2) - Aloha Bowl
1983: 8-4 (5-2) - Aloha Bowl
1984: 11-1 (6-1) - Orange Bowl
Then starting in 1985, performance started to go downhill for a bit through 1988 ...
1985: 7-5 (5-3) - Freedom Bowl
1986: 8-3-1 (5-2-1) - Sun Bowl
1987: 7-4-1 (4-3-1) - Independence Bowl
1988: 6-5 (3-5)
The 1986 Sun Bowl against Alabama was a look in the mirror moment for James and his program as it was painfully obvious that on the field that day that the program was slow and had regressed. Problem at that point is that the 1987 recruiting class would have largely been wrapped up so any material change in recruiting strategy would have come with the 1988 class.
We know from history that the change showed up on the field during the middle of 1989 with a lot of RS Freshman, etc. getting on the field and leading the way to the 1990 - 1992 Rose Bowls and a National Championship.
For Chris Petersen, there's a comparable realization that he had playing Alabama in the 2016 College Football Playoffs. The change in our recruiting from that point forward has been fairly obvious and there's a clear transition in talent differences between the upper and lower classes. That's fine and all but it's been talked about enough but its not the focus that I want to touch on.
The problem in looking at what UW does at this point under Petersen is that we've taken the approach that we are going to do what we do and out execute you. That's great but it's not setting yourself up for success. Go back to the Oregon game and how well Oregon has defended the play action pass. A large part of that is because what we're trying to get out of the play action game is overly predictable. We run 2 primary receivers out of that, it's almost always some version of a crossing route, and defenses are able to be relatively predictable in the situations that we're going to call those plays. If I tell you what plays are coming, you should be able to stop them.
On the defensive end of things, in a lot of ways it reminds me of where the Seahawks were with the Legion of Boom. At some point your secondary gets a reputation to the point of teams not wanting to take chances on them. As such, the play calling is much more conservative in nature and the turnovers drop substantially. At that point, turnovers come because of being able to generate a pass rush (why UW can't create them should be obvious to anybody at this point). More disturbing to me at this point is that we don't consistently create situations to get off the field (as some call out routinely, our 3rd down percentage isn't great and that's because of the makeup and style of what the defense is designed to do). It's hard to criticize since it clearly works on the scoreboard. However, I do think it's worthwhile to realize that the way that the defense plays is in context of the offense as well ... and to be its most successful requires the offense to be successful to get leads forcing the opposition to not be able to play conservatively.
If you combine 3rd and 4th down conversions together, then some of the per game trends this year is a sign of trouble:
Auburn: 10 of 18 conversions
Arizona St: 9 of 16 conversions
UCLA: 9 of 14 conversions
Oregon: 12 of 18 conversions
Cal: 6 of 16 conversions
It's easy to criticize the performance on 3rd down ... but what it really comes down to is not consistently winning enough on 1st and 2nd down. On the whole, the defense has a philosophy of creating situations where the opposition has to consistently execute and we pounce on mistakes. That's great provided that we provide opposition to consistent execution. Yes, some of that will be remedied by some upgrades in talent in the front 6 ... but it's also a requirement for the defense to be successful to win 1st and 2nd down enough to put teams in poor positions to convert and sustain drives. By not doing so, it's putting the offense in positions where they are more consistently backed up and in areas where they are not likely to be successful given its own challenges.
All in all, everything is holistic in nature. The ills of the offense lead to the ills of the special teams leads to the ills of the defense which leads to the ills of the offense. The building blocks that are in place in this program are better than what exist in many others so it's not completely broken. However, there are warning signs out there for the program. Signs that require looking into the mirror and having honest conversations about where the program is and where it is going forward.
If you aren't willing to evolve and grow you are going to get caught and passed. That's not an opinion ... that's fact. This offseason is a crossroads moment to me where the future direction of this program will be decided on whether they are going to evolve or passed because the blueprint of how to put yourself into a position to beat UW is now well known in this conference.
Everything in this program comes back to looking at the tenure of Don James ...
From 1977 to 1984, Washington finished either 1st or 2nd in the conference each season and never lost more than 2 conference games in a year:
1977: 8-4 (6-1) - Rose Bowl
1978: 7-4 (6-2)
1979: 9-3 (5-2) - Sun Bowl
1980: 9-3 (6-1) - Rose Bowl
1981: 10-2 (6-2) - Rose Bowl
1982: 10-2 (6-2) - Aloha Bowl
1983: 8-4 (5-2) - Aloha Bowl
1984: 11-1 (6-1) - Orange Bowl
Then starting in 1985, performance started to go downhill for a bit through 1988 ...
1985: 7-5 (5-3) - Freedom Bowl
1986: 8-3-1 (5-2-1) - Sun Bowl
1987: 7-4-1 (4-3-1) - Independence Bowl
1988: 6-5 (3-5)
The 1986 Sun Bowl against Alabama was a look in the mirror moment for James and his program as it was painfully obvious that on the field that day that the program was slow and had regressed. Problem at that point is that the 1987 recruiting class would have largely been wrapped up so any material change in recruiting strategy would have come with the 1988 class.
We know from history that the change showed up on the field during the middle of 1989 with a lot of RS Freshman, etc. getting on the field and leading the way to the 1990 - 1992 Rose Bowls and a National Championship.
For Chris Petersen, there's a comparable realization that he had playing Alabama in the 2016 College Football Playoffs. The change in our recruiting from that point forward has been fairly obvious and there's a clear transition in talent differences between the upper and lower classes. That's fine and all but it's been talked about enough but its not the focus that I want to touch on.
The problem in looking at what UW does at this point under Petersen is that we've taken the approach that we are going to do what we do and out execute you. That's great but it's not setting yourself up for success. Go back to the Oregon game and how well Oregon has defended the play action pass. A large part of that is because what we're trying to get out of the play action game is overly predictable. We run 2 primary receivers out of that, it's almost always some version of a crossing route, and defenses are able to be relatively predictable in the situations that we're going to call those plays. If I tell you what plays are coming, you should be able to stop them.
On the defensive end of things, in a lot of ways it reminds me of where the Seahawks were with the Legion of Boom. At some point your secondary gets a reputation to the point of teams not wanting to take chances on them. As such, the play calling is much more conservative in nature and the turnovers drop substantially. At that point, turnovers come because of being able to generate a pass rush (why UW can't create them should be obvious to anybody at this point). More disturbing to me at this point is that we don't consistently create situations to get off the field (as some call out routinely, our 3rd down percentage isn't great and that's because of the makeup and style of what the defense is designed to do). It's hard to criticize since it clearly works on the scoreboard. However, I do think it's worthwhile to realize that the way that the defense plays is in context of the offense as well ... and to be its most successful requires the offense to be successful to get leads forcing the opposition to not be able to play conservatively.
If you combine 3rd and 4th down conversions together, then some of the per game trends this year is a sign of trouble:
Auburn: 10 of 18 conversions
Arizona St: 9 of 16 conversions
UCLA: 9 of 14 conversions
Oregon: 12 of 18 conversions
Cal: 6 of 16 conversions
It's easy to criticize the performance on 3rd down ... but what it really comes down to is not consistently winning enough on 1st and 2nd down. On the whole, the defense has a philosophy of creating situations where the opposition has to consistently execute and we pounce on mistakes. That's great provided that we provide opposition to consistent execution. Yes, some of that will be remedied by some upgrades in talent in the front 6 ... but it's also a requirement for the defense to be successful to win 1st and 2nd down enough to put teams in poor positions to convert and sustain drives. By not doing so, it's putting the offense in positions where they are more consistently backed up and in areas where they are not likely to be successful given its own challenges.
All in all, everything is holistic in nature. The ills of the offense lead to the ills of the special teams leads to the ills of the defense which leads to the ills of the offense. The building blocks that are in place in this program are better than what exist in many others so it's not completely broken. However, there are warning signs out there for the program. Signs that require looking into the mirror and having honest conversations about where the program is and where it is going forward.
If you aren't willing to evolve and grow you are going to get caught and passed. That's not an opinion ... that's fact. This offseason is a crossroads moment to me where the future direction of this program will be decided on whether they are going to evolve or passed because the blueprint of how to put yourself into a position to beat UW is now well known in this conference.
Comments
Aggressors and risk takers create much of their own luck. Pete’s passive approach promotes indifference that requires near perfect execution at this level. Not a particularly fun way to play, made even more difficult since it’s so damn predictable.
There’s no question the program is at a crossroads. If Pete is to be a great coach and create a legacy at UW, he must figure this out and adjust accordingly. Can’t be an easy time being a player and it’s painful watching.
But to your point, there's a lot of predictable elements to the defense and the current talent level really makes it hard to create negative plays for the offense. You could argue that that's a leading issue of why we struggle recruiting edge players.
Bingo. Herm and ASU put the blueprint out there, 4 Pac-12 inferior teams have used it, one finally got over on us with it.
DDY/Coker/you talk about UW having 60% of the talent we are going to have in the next 2-3 years on the pods. If Pete's philosophy is still going to be "get it to 4th qtr and we like are chances" in the pos Pac-12 is that going to even matter.
Elite and even great teams in cfb make it a 30-45 minute contest in 9 of their 12 games where the starters are safe on the sidelines and your building depth with the back-ups. Is that in Pete's DNA, or has he told/said the pac-12 is "hard" so many times he now believes it and playing not to lose?
In a nutshell as you guys say: Does/will Pete "fuq"