Auburndawg
New Fish
In 2009 Sark immediately took the program from 0-12, to 4-5 in the conference, 5-7 overall. Since then the only “improvement” has been due to playing a weaker non-conference schedule. We usually beat the bad teams and usually lose to the good teams. We continued to tread water in mediocreville this year.
I thought Petersen would bring immediate improvement. Why didn’t that happen? Let’s look at our 5 losses.
Oregon is what it is. We weren’t ready this year to win in Eugene
The defense let us down against UCLA, but that night Kikaha was hurt, Shaq was playing offense, and we had just lost Peters and the defensive backfield was a mess. I would love to play UCLA again now.
The defense shut down Stanford, ASU, and Arizona, but the offense scored one TD against Stanford, one FG against ASU, and their mistakes completely cost us the game against Zona.
Bottom line: the offense definitely cost us three games. The defense was excellent almost every game. In this era of high scoring, our D held 9 of 13 opponents under 25 points (and we should’ve held Arizona to under 20).
Why did the offense struggle? It was clearly a combination of two things:
Bad QB play:
Miles has certainly improved, but his inability to throw on timing cost us a lot and made us one dimensional in some of our losses. And when Miles was out, Lindquist and Williams completely failed to move the team.
Mediocre Oline play:
The Oline was dominated by Stanford and ASU, and they were never the dominant force I thought they would be, given the depth and experience we had.
What caused these problems? Now we get into speculation:
Bad Oline recruiting. Hatchie is our only 4 star linemen. Tanigawa, Atoe, and Shelton were all 2 stars
Oline injuries and changes. Riva was out the whole year. Charles was hurt a lot. And the Tanigawa/Criste shuffle at center was not helpful.
Miles missed Spring practice. That had to set back his development
Miles missed two games. Playing against Hawaii would have given him another game to develop. And would we have beaten ASU if he had played?
Bad player development by Sark. Why wasn’t Miles more developed? Why weren’t our linemen better?
Bad coaching/play calling by Petersen/Smith. Clearly the coaches struggled to find an identity for this offense. The play calling was highly questionable at times. Execution was often sloppy; too many fumbles, too many penalties.
We all feel good now because we beat the Beavs and Cougs, (and no blow outs or 3 game losing streaks) but 4-5 is nothing to celebrate. Given how well coached the defense was, how much improvement we saw, and how hard the team played, I lean towards trusting Petersen, and blaming Sark for this year’s mediocrity. I still think Petersen is going to be the next great Husky coach, but there were enough coaching issues this year to create uncertainty. We are just going to have to be patient
Next year we lose 6 starters on defense, and 5 of our top 8 Olinemen. We are probably going to be too young to see a big breakthrough. One more year treading water is likely; but after that there must be a big leap forward.
I thought Petersen would bring immediate improvement. Why didn’t that happen? Let’s look at our 5 losses.
Oregon is what it is. We weren’t ready this year to win in Eugene
The defense let us down against UCLA, but that night Kikaha was hurt, Shaq was playing offense, and we had just lost Peters and the defensive backfield was a mess. I would love to play UCLA again now.
The defense shut down Stanford, ASU, and Arizona, but the offense scored one TD against Stanford, one FG against ASU, and their mistakes completely cost us the game against Zona.
Bottom line: the offense definitely cost us three games. The defense was excellent almost every game. In this era of high scoring, our D held 9 of 13 opponents under 25 points (and we should’ve held Arizona to under 20).
Why did the offense struggle? It was clearly a combination of two things:
Bad QB play:
Miles has certainly improved, but his inability to throw on timing cost us a lot and made us one dimensional in some of our losses. And when Miles was out, Lindquist and Williams completely failed to move the team.
Mediocre Oline play:
The Oline was dominated by Stanford and ASU, and they were never the dominant force I thought they would be, given the depth and experience we had.
What caused these problems? Now we get into speculation:
Bad Oline recruiting. Hatchie is our only 4 star linemen. Tanigawa, Atoe, and Shelton were all 2 stars
Oline injuries and changes. Riva was out the whole year. Charles was hurt a lot. And the Tanigawa/Criste shuffle at center was not helpful.
Miles missed Spring practice. That had to set back his development
Miles missed two games. Playing against Hawaii would have given him another game to develop. And would we have beaten ASU if he had played?
Bad player development by Sark. Why wasn’t Miles more developed? Why weren’t our linemen better?
Bad coaching/play calling by Petersen/Smith. Clearly the coaches struggled to find an identity for this offense. The play calling was highly questionable at times. Execution was often sloppy; too many fumbles, too many penalties.
We all feel good now because we beat the Beavs and Cougs, (and no blow outs or 3 game losing streaks) but 4-5 is nothing to celebrate. Given how well coached the defense was, how much improvement we saw, and how hard the team played, I lean towards trusting Petersen, and blaming Sark for this year’s mediocrity. I still think Petersen is going to be the next great Husky coach, but there were enough coaching issues this year to create uncertainty. We are just going to have to be patient
Next year we lose 6 starters on defense, and 5 of our top 8 Olinemen. We are probably going to be too young to see a big breakthrough. One more year treading water is likely; but after that there must be a big leap forward.
