Matt Calkins with the UW puff piece

DerekJohnson said:

RoadDawg55 said:

HFNY said:

Wasn't Lake the DC when the Huskies went to the CFP after the 2016 season?

Kwat. Lake took over in 2018. I’ve also read he called the Fiesta Bowl after the 2017 season, but I can’t say with any certainty.

I'm not saying this to pile on, but there was a noticeable drop-off with the D when the switch was made to Lake.

My eyes suggest the same: The defense seemed to regress after transitioning to Lake. I wonder how much of that was the defense actually getting worse and how much was the defense getting more physically painful to watch, though...

Statistically, the defense went from 17.7 points per game and 4.6 yards per play in 2016, to 16.1 points per game and 4.4 yards per play in 2017. Lake takes over in 2018, and it "dropped off" to 16.4/4.7. It wasn't until 2019 where things got noticeably worse, at 19.4/5.2.

Overall, the stats year-on-year are close enough that I'd blame personnel changes over anything schematic for the difference. The defense did just seem to get a little less "nasty" every year, but that's also entirely personnel, and it started after 2016, so it wasn't a Kwiatkowski to Lake thing. Schematically, things looked pretty similar after the transition.

So Kwiatkowski's last two defenses outperformed Lake's first two defense by an average of about a point per game and a half yard per play, and one had Vea/Gaines up front with Victor/BBK behind and the other had Brandon Wellington and Kyler Manu...

UW is going to plunger The Tree this fall. YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST!