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PaoPao
PostGameOrangeSlices
Member, Swaye's Wigwam Posts: 26,459 
Time to walk the Special Teams plank
UW sucked in every metric in speshul teams.
Keep coaching Tight Ends, get away from kickers
Comments
Special teams (kicking and snapping aside) is a reflection of the depth of your program
Our depth was a combination of young and shitty … sometimes abundance
The punting issues were there well before this year … upgrading the punter is a requirement.
We'll see what they do with Gross … at minimum he should be competing for his job next year.
If special teams sucks ass next year then let's have the discussion on PaoPao …
As it is take the offseason to review if there are any structural elements that need to be addressed … the balance of this is going to solved by better players
You don't need to have NFL players to cover punts and kickoffs.
Our punter was bad…for a FCS or a D2 athlete
Gross regressed
Get a coach in there who specializes in special teams. This isn't the fucking WAC anymore.
No way. They’re poorly coached on kick and punt coverage specifically. Sure it’d be nice to have some better depth, but guys like Heims were cracking skulls on kickoff under DeBoer.
PaoPao stinks.
Exactly. Heims and Dunn were killers on special teams for 2 years. Both players must've each de-cleated a few players with some pretty jarring hits. Bruener too since he wasn't starting.
Heims and Dunn were ghosts under fischy "special" teams, and both probably transfer. Heims already is.
I think Dunn has always looked good when in the game, but this staff doesn't seem to like him.
Special teams legitimately lost the WSU game and the Rutgers game. I swear WSU started every position at their 40 or better.
One gripe here - why wasn't Ngata returning kicks more? He was doing well by the end of 2023 and on Saturday he looked to be about the only guy with a fire under his ass.
Heims and Tristan Dunn also seemed to make big hits on kick coverage and were never seen this year.
I'll give PaoPao more Tim but a former player who was a TE under him I was with a few weeks ago said he hates him and he's an asshole, so there's also that.
I was curious how many tackles Dunn had this year…3, against Weeb State:
https://gohuskies.com/sports/football/roster/tristan-dunn/15956
This is the guy who won the team's Big Hit award last year, and this staff can't even get him kickoff coverage tackles?
Burn the Special Teams unit to the ground and start anew
Nobody is debating that the punter was bad (I was calling it out going back to last year) and his inability to hit anything with hang time or direction caused massive coverage issues.
No idea what happened to Gross but between accuracy concerns plus a leg that doesn't allow for any confidence on kicks past 45 yards (that's not good enough in the Big10) and you've got a problem there.
I didn't say you needed NFL players to cover kicks … but you do need Big10 caliber players to cover kicks. In this conference Special Teams is a focus point for many programs. It historically hasn't been a major factor in the recent PAC12. Need to address obviously.
I'm not a huge PaoPao guy but 1) I'm going to give Fisch and his staff more than this transition year before I go after anybody too hard and 2) people can evolve and whatnot over a 10 year period
Ngata was a huge jag all year I definitely asked why he WAS returning kicks many times
Well, I did the stats and he's average 2 more yards per-return than Reynolds over their Husky careers so I rest my case.
Also, during a typical Thanksgiving weekend Husky football griping we were talking about the last time UW had a kick return for a touchdown and wondering if it was John fucking Ross. With punt returns we got an Odunze one last year versus Cal but before that may have been Pettis. I know Fuller got ran down by a Colorado DT on a long one too.
Yeah I saw Pettis on Sunday for a moment and had flash backs to him not running into the 2nd guy down field
What special athletes did we have on ST last year that we're so much better than this year's team?
We have enough "Big Ten" players to cover kicks just like last year's team but suddenly after 1 year we sucked, and the only real difference was a coaching change.
If the last 2 years of better corching didn't convince you, nothing will.
Our special teams immediately regressed when Lambo took over for James
Pao Pao fucking sucks and is a red flag indictment on Fisch. Special teams took a huge step backwards this season despite having most of the same players. He should be replaced yesterday but he won’t because we aren’t that lucky and Fisch isn’t that smart.
Regarding TE, he couldn’t recruit under Petersen and I don’t see much evidence that that’s changed. He lost Vander Ploog and the two commits have very pedestrian offer sheets. I guess with NIL I don’t know how much it matters how good a recruiter you are anymore. I don’t care if he’s an asshole if he puts up results on the field but I’m highly skeptical that he’s a net positive on the staff.
Weren’t we also on a scholarship reduction as well?
Totally disagree on the special teams point about it being a matter of depth. There are shitty teams with lackluster rosters that are well-coached on special teams. It all comes down to fundamentals and coaching. You don’t need to have the best athletes and 4-star players to be good on special teams.
I’m not going to lay it all on Paopao though. It starts at the top.
Fuck Fisch.
The you can't blame Lambo because scholarship reductions resurfaces
UW was somewhat fortunate that the entire sport was going through the second scholarship reduction
Dovetailed with the invention of football
There is zero reason for PaoPao to be coaching ST next year. None. There is more than enough evidence the unit was terrible.
These are the decisions that separate a head coach from a coordinator
That wouldn't have affected it immediately. They didn't kick players off the team.