A year ago right now the Huskies had losses to Auburn, Cal and Oregon, this year they have losses to Cal and Stanford. The question is: Will this be a trend going forward?
If you’re old enough to remember the movie “Love Story”, let me change up the lyrics to its theme song:
Where do I begin? To tell the story of how bad a team can play?
Washington fans had the misfortune of watching their Huskies play one of the worst games in several years against an embattled Stanford Cardinal.
“Embattled” because the Cardinal are missing most of their starting o-line, a starting quarterback, and by the end of this car-crash the second-string quarterback had left the game and was replaced by the third-stringer.
Washington literally did everything wrong; whether it was missed tackles, dropped balls, senior offensive linemen getting whipped by underclass DL’s, mismatched corners against tight ends, you name it.
One guy who did standout was Elijah Molden. And Richard Newton was having a great game until he left injured in the third quarter.
Game grades? That would be a huge F — not just for failing but for completely flat-lining on the part of the Huskies on all fronts.
But, it is what it is. Far be it for the Huskies to break from tradition and actually win in Palo Alto.
Coach Petersen preached all week about how this could be a trap game, and before anyone goes off the rails about Petersen going for it on fourth-and-two when the score was still 13-10, let us re-visit that wonderful Pete Carroll call in the Super Bowl a few years back…
In Petersen’s case, it wasn’t a bad decision — but the play that was called was…bad. Really bad. Why pass? Why not run when the score is still close and your running backs have been able to pick apart the Cardinal defense?
Is it possible that some things are just not meant to be?
Whatever it is, Washington better get it together before they head back on the road next week to Tucson, and then host Oregon at home.
The schedule isn’t looking as favorable at this point as it was before the season started. Indeed, this is a young team, but it is disappointing to see veterans get so completely owned by the opponent’s underclassmen.
And now (at this writing) Richard Newton went out injured.
But just for fun, let’s re-visit that “F grade”…
Flat
Flatulent
Fallible
Faulty
Faint-hearted
But I digress…this was a terrible game, a terrible loss, and a terrible team-effort. If you have some better “f-words” just be sure to keep them clean.
Washington will re-group; they always do. But fans might need to be a little more patient than usual this season because (just as I predicted), this a transitional year for Washington football.
The proof will be in how soon and how well they re-group over the next couple of weeks. Be sure and consider that before starting any “fire coach so and so” threads on the message board.
