Pre-Apple Cup 2019 Pole: Fire or Keep Petersen

I just want to buy Peterman's boat on the cheap.

Unpopular (around here) opinion:
I'm not a win at all cost guy. If I wanted to see "my guys" lie, cheat, and steal their way to a championship, I'd just skip football altogether and follow politics. Although I'm sure there's at least some amount of grey (or beyond) area travelling to avoid being completely noncompetitive, I like that the staff runs a relatively clean program. I like not having a Louis CK moment once or twice per season and finding out that the guy I was just cheering for Saturday beat the shit out of his girlfriend, stole some lady's purse, or raped a sorority girl earlier in the season, and I'm just now hearing about it. I like that Petersen tends to genuinely care about the players' futures and well being. Call me a pussy, but that kind of stuff gives me the warm tinglies. Hire Urbs, and Washington's in the playoffs again by '21. And I'll be watching something else.
So it's with no small amount of cognitive dissonance that I'm starting to haaaaaaate Chris Petersen. I hate his fucking clock management. I hate his fucking lack of preparation two or three times per season. I hate his fucking squandering of talent. I hate how fucking tedious it is to watch every loss and every win. I hate how every time this team plays somebody with even slightly more talent, I have ZERO hope of victory. Zero. By the end of last season, I was already starting to hate-watch games, but at least I was mostly hate-watching wins. There were a lot of markers of program stability: Every loss is close, no blowouts, solid defense always, excellent fundamentals like tackling, don't give up big plays, don't lose consecutive games, don't lose after a bye, solid upper tier recruiting, players improving every year in the program, a steady stream of NFLers coming out of the program, focus on the trenches, etc. That stability suggested that a ridiculously frustrating ten wins was the floor, and it seemed insane to complain about that, frustrating or not.
This season, every single one of those markers of stability have been ratfucked away. All of the goodwill and benefit of the doubt have been thrown in the trash. Program momentum is a large number with a negative sign in front. It makes all that tedium and annoyance and all of those warts all the more awful: "You used to be a shitty game day coach who's perhaps the best Sunday through Friday coach in the country, so the wins come anyway. Now you're a shitty game day coach who loses to Colorado and Cal. It's not worth it anymore."
I want a coach who does things the right way, so I don't want to fire Chris Petersen. But I also want to win, and I'm increasingly thinking Chris Petersen isn't the guy for that. So I'm kind of at a loss. I'm getting a lot more work done around the house on Saturdays now, though, so at least I've got that going for me. Which is nice.

1to392831weretaken said:

Unpopular (around here) opinion:
I'm not a win at all cost guy. If I wanted to see "my guys" lie, cheat, and steal their way to a championship, I'd just skip football altogether and follow politics. Although I'm sure there's at least some amount of grey (or beyond) area travelling to avoid being completely noncompetitive, I like that the staff runs a relatively clean program. I like not having a Louis CK moment once or twice per season and finding out that the guy I was just cheering for Saturday beat the shit out of his girlfriend, stole some lady's purse, or raped a sorority girl earlier in the season, and I'm just now hearing about it. I like that Petersen tends to genuinely care about the players' futures and well being. Call me a pussy, but that kind of stuff gives me the warm tinglies. Hire Urbs, and Washington's in the playoffs again by '21. And I'll be watching something else.
So it's with no small amount of cognitive dissonance that I'm starting to haaaaaaate Chris Petersen. I hate his fucking clock management. I hate his fucking lack of preparation two or three times per season. I hate his fucking squandering of talent. I hate how fucking tedious it is to watch every loss and every win. I hate how every time this team plays somebody with even slightly more talent, I have ZERO hope of victory. Zero. By the end of last season, I was already starting to hate-watch games, but at least I was mostly hate-watching wins. There were a lot of markers of program stability: Every loss is close, no blowouts, solid defense always, excellent fundamentals like tackling, don't give up big plays, don't lose consecutive games, don't lose after a bye, solid upper tier recruiting, players improving every year in the program, a steady stream of NFLers coming out of the program, focus on the trenches, etc. That stability suggested that a ridiculously frustrating ten wins was the floor, and it seemed insane to complain about that, frustrating or not.
This season, every single one of those markers of stability have been ratfucked away. All of the goodwill and benefit of the doubt have been thrown in the trash. Program momentum is a large number with a negative sign in front. It makes all that tedium and annoyance and all of those warts all the more awful: "You used to be a shitty game day coach who's perhaps the best Sunday through Friday coach in the country, so the wins come anyway. Now you're a shitty game day coach who loses to Colorado and Cal. It's not worth it anymore."
I want a coach who does things the right way, so I don't want to fire Chris Petersen. But I also want to win, and I'm increasingly thinking Chris Petersen isn't the guy for that. So I'm kind of at a loss. I'm getting a lot more work done around the house on Saturdays now, though, so at least I've got that going for me. Which is nice.

I 100% AGREE with this. POTW.