...there's no excuse for Washington not to roll.
Narrator: They won't...
I'm going to again disagree with everyone about last year's games "not counting." It was football. The better prepared teams with the better gameplans won. I judge a coach based off how well their team performs relative to the talent on hand. That was a for-win roster that struggled HARD to win three. They were real football games that really counted, and it was at best a C- grade from the staff. To me, THAT'S the disturbing trend.
If winning 11 games, leading to improved recruiting, is your path to optimism, you weren't watching in 2020, when actual, honest to god football was being played. I agree this is probably the most complete overall roster in the conference (linebacker depth aside), which is why I'm going to be so pissed when they lose four or five games.
I‘d say 50-50 agree/disagree. Covid season games counted, but they also weren’t indicative of what teams and coaching staffs are capable of.
Both Washington and Oregon had new OCs that were neutered by the lack of install. Rosters were out of shape because the conference didn’t care enough, teams were playing with guys they didn’t want to play. Cale Millen is a real team player, but I would have preferred to not see him being forced to make special team tackles in the conference championship game.
There’s only so much coaching can do when you don’t have time or players to coach. 2020 gave us some answers but it raised just as many questions.
My understanding is that UW, at least, got a full allotment of spring and fall practices in. Is this not the case? COVID is such a weird excuse. The Huskies were without two players, neither of whom were projected on the two deep. They had the full team on hand, and they practiced. If the players weren't held accountable for conditioning because COVID, that's a knock on the staff.
The Huskies played at full strength except for missing Ryan Bowman against Stanford. As president of the Ryan Bowman fan club, I'm comfortable saying that if missing Ryan Bowman is the difference between a win and a loss against a homeless team, your skeaad has problems, and you need to open to fuckin' eyes.
Oregon got 3/15 spring practices and kids were off campus for all of the offseason schedule except a week of voluntary summer workouts. I have to think it was similar for UW.
Fall camp was abbreviated too. Oregon missed 1/3 scrimmages due to a false positive covid test. It was a horrible time to install a new offense.
Sounds like Oregon *should* have been butt slammed by Beavlet and Cal. All is well in Meatville.