This weekend’s matchup between Washington and Brigham Young will have to be something other than a slug-fest. It will have to get out of the trenches and into open spaces.
There’s pressure on both teams in terms of national relevence. The Huskies need to keep winning, we all know that. But for BYU, they already knocked off Wisconsin on the road, and if they were to knock off the #11 Huskies on the road, that would catapult them into the top 15 if not higher.
What do the Huskies need to do to win?
Washington has to play tempo — meaning more hurry-up offense (at least 50% of the time). They need to use tempo to speed up the game.
By physical, but do not try to make it an in-the-box-physicality game — that’s what BYU wants. Most of these players are older than Washington and this is how they beat Wisconsin; they made it a slug fest. What Washington has is a speed advantage, so as Mickey would say in Rocky, “Speed Rock, speed is what we need.”
Picking up on the speed factor, Washington needs to use Chico McClatcher, Myles Gaskin, and Salvon Ahmed in space — this is where BYU can’t counter and this is how Washington can beat them with their speed and athleticism. The Huskies need to get the speed out in the second level and exploit the Cougar’s young secondary.
Taylor Mangum — he does a lot of rollouts and throws on the run. Washington needs to pick off some of those passes because he can be pressured to throw bad passes. The Huskies need to make him pay on the rollouts and play-action moves.
Stop the run better — BYU loves to be physical at the line of scrimmage and run the ball, so Washington needs to get better penetration than they did last week. On passing downs we saw Benning Potoa’e moved inside last weekend, but perhaps they could use his quickness and strength during running plays.
Get better on third-down defense. This is getting ridiculous — and not in a good way. Washington’s third-down defense is one of the worst in the country and so this has to be fixed and yesterday going forward.
