It’s official. Just six days after the university suspended Jimmy Lake one game for striking Ruperake Fuavai, they’ve officially parted ways with him. The former head coach was 7-6 during his time at the helm, and while he was once considered one of the hottest coaching names on the market, Lake now has a lot to answer for before he’s considered for another head coaching job.
Allegations were brought to light on Saturday that the incident on the field during the Oregon game wasn’t the first time Lake laid hands on one of his players. While that alone should be enough to fire him with cause, his 2021 season was an embarrassment in so many ways, and athletic director Jen Cohen needed to part ways with him. With the power to hire whoever he wanted at offensive coordinator, he made arguably the worst hire he possibly could have in John Donovan.
After watching what the offense looked like under Junior Adams against Arizona State, where the Huskies put up 30 points against an FBS opponent for the first time this season, it was pretty obvious where the problems in this team were. Lake’s legacy at Washington will surely be dissected by everyone (including myself) over the course of the week, because he did so much good for Washington before being promoted to head coach.
Since he took over in December of 2019, recruiting has basically come to a standstill. Now, that isn’t saying that Washington has gotten commitments from incredibly talented players under Lake, but the national perception of the school as a recruiting destination seems to be at the same level it was under Tyrone Willingham. Lake and his staff were only able to pull in six four-star recruits, and got blown out for almost every coveted in-state player.
Whoever comes in next is going to have quite the mess to clean up, both in terms of image and recruiting. There’s a possibility that there are quite a few big names out there. The rumor mill is swirling that former Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops is interested in the position. When a national search is conducted, garnering interest from a name like that would be huge for the future of the program
It’s worth noting that there’s someone that Stoops works with at Fox Sports 1 who Husky fans have some experience with that might also be interested in a return to the position… that person who shall remain nameless would probably be the one name that Husky fans would be ok with not conducting a national search for.
