Despite all the moaning and crying on Twitter and the disparaging comments from local newspapers, Jimmy Lake made an excellent hire in John Donovan today.
Why?
One reason is that Jimmy Lake has to have an offensive coordinator whom he trusts.
Secondly, the offensive coordinator has to share the same vision of how this team’s offense will perform in the future.
So this is not a popularity contest for the offensive coordinator; this is something that will be tagged with Coach Lake from day one — and he already has a bulls-eye on his back.
If this was the Oregon hire and had all the NIKE promotional marketing machine behind them (247, ESPN, SI, Fox Sports, etc.) it would be considered the greatest hire since Brady Hoke…
Oh wait — we all know how that turned out. If you’re looking for some entertainment, go back and google search the articles and fan reactions when Hoke was hired.
But I digress…
I did predict that, no matter who Lake hired, fans would be complaining and the newspapers would be bemoaning the hire if the hire was anyone other than Kellen Moore, or a clone of Bill Walsh…
In fact, Moore was getting negative shade thrown on him when it was beginning to look like he was going to be the hire.
The Facts
So let’s get down to business here — what can we tell you now about Coach Donovan?
** Donovan was tutored by Nate Hackett; the current offensive coordinator at Green Bay and known as the best quarterback coach in the NFL.
** His most current tutoring came from John DeFelipo who’s the OC at Jacksonville — formerly at Philly and Minnesota.
** Donovan is well-respected in NFL circles; he’s got a tough attitude having grown up in Jersey.
** Donovan actually helped James Franklin get to Penn State because he coached some of the most prolific offenses in Vanderbilt history.
** He’s from the Ralph Friedgen coaching tree; same as Franklin.
Take Your Putrid and Shove It
According to the Seattle Times, one problem with Donovan is that “he’s never coached on the West Coast”.
I give you Chip Kelly. I give you Mario Cristobal. Hell, I’ll give you Don James if we want to go down that road.
And the Times also talked about how Donovan’s offenses at Penn State were “putrid.”
Washington won the Pac-12 in 2018 with a 10-4 record, and the combined total points they lost by was 15 — one of those games was in overtime.
That offense was ranked 89th in the country.
All Donovan has to do, with the defenses that Washington has been producing the last few years, is get the Huskies back in the top 30. If they had done that in 2018 they could have gone undefeated.
(This calls for some egghead math but if you can figure it out, you’ll get what I’m saying).
Washington is expected to have the best defense in the conference in 2020, and that’s good news for the offense.
The Penn State Debate
As for the “putrid” offenses at Penn State, if you go back and look at the archives you’ll find that it wasn’t as cut and dry as it might have seemed.
On Donovan’s wiki page it says:
“A former graduate assistant who worked on the staff during the 2014 season claimed on Twitter that the offense was largely designed by the “HFC” and PennLive.com’s David Jones wrote an article headlined “John Donovan was scapegoat for rebuild that will take longer than fans can accept.”
Prior to this, there was criticism about the performance from 5-star quarterback, Christian Hackenberg and poor blocking from the offensive line.
But the recruiting classes weren’t stellar prior to Franklin and Donovan’s arrival either.
Penn State was still reeling from a five-year probation and the Jerry Sandusky issue; this was one of the worst scandals in CFB history because of the subject of pedophilia and what Joe Paterno knew or didn’t know.
Penn State’s recruiting classes were not anything to write home about:
31st in 2011
47th in 2012
33rd in 2013
They finally broke the Top 25 in 2014.
There were some dark clouds over the program when Franklin took over — but without that kind of drama going on, Donovan had record-breaking offenses at Vanderbilt.
You can always look at stats on a page and just see the numbers, but there’s always a story behind those numbers — and what the local writers and crybaby fans are missing here is the context.
Smart coaches like Jimmy Lake look at things other than those numbers; he’s been in the NFL, he knows people. He knows what he wants to do with Washington’s offense, and he knows the kind of offensive mindset he wants to see with this hire.
Just Stop It
As for the recruiting aspect…The Seattle Times feels that, because Donovan isn’t from the West Coast, he has no “recruiting ties”.
The local beat writer, who shall not be named, doesn’t cover recruiting, and usually posts wrong info on Twitter about recruits or retweets those who do cover recruiting. So what would he know about “West Coast recruiting?”
As already stated; Chip Kelly, Mario Cristobal, etc….none had ties on the West Coast.
But again, this is a naive statement from this beat writer. Donovan actually does have ties on the West Coast: Jimmy Lake is one tie. And Lake is one of the best in the West. (buh-duh-bump)
But the fact is that Washington’s staff already has excellent West-Coast recruiters, and Donovan isn’t at Washington to recruit — he’s at Washington to fix the offense.
Usually the offensive coordinators only recruit the quarterbacks and that’s about it, and to add to that this is usually all on the head coach to give the final yay or nay.
If you were to look at a staff’s recruiting talent like a depth chart, you could say Washington’s coaching staff is already stacked without Donovan.
The Final Analysis
Donovan likes the pro-style offense, but no one really knows at this point what he’ll be doing at Washington; whether it will be a pro-style with more RPO or pistol, etc. No one really knows.
Donovan and Lake have sat down and talked about the vision for this offense, but this will all come to light in 2020.
So fans need to relax, and I know that no matter what I write here there will be 35 haters who will pick it apart like vultures. The bottom line is about what kind of success Donovan has next year.
The proof will be in the pudding — so why judge this hire right now? He hasn’t called a single play at Washington yet. The shade-throwing going on is absolutely ridiculous.
One long-time Husky fan I spoke to said “I don’t care if he’s hated as much as Donald Trump, as long as he produces on the field. This isn’t about popularity, it’s about x’s and o’s — and If Washington is in the top 30 in offense next year, with the defense they return, they do have a legit shot to get to the college play off next year.”
Just give the guy a chance — now you can relax, go back to your desks or laptops or smartphones or whatever, and wait until the season starts.
We can re-visit this subject at the end of the 2020 season.
