If you want to pin point the biggest problem the UW football team has right now, it is communicating effectively, and fairly with the media. You can tell that the staff has been ordered to be very careful, and not to disclose any information to the media by Willingham.
They say that Lambright was the first Husky coach to lose his job because of his mouth, Ty, and his boss TT may be the first to lose it for not using it enough.
Ted Miller's article yesterday concerning team conditioning is a classic case of the disrespect the UW is showing the media. The media by the way, especially a true expert like Ted Miller, should be able to get enough information during an interview to write a story without having to fill in between the lines. Ted is a very fine writer, and probably the best college football mind the newspapers have in the Northwest, so his opinions really have a lot of weight with me.
Miller makes the comment that the top 25 conditioned teams in the country are usually in the AP top 25 pole each week. Washington isn't on either list for a good reason, the majority of the squad hasn't put enough time in the weight room since they have been here and it has retarded any development they could possibly have regardless of the talent level they arrived with.
Digging a little deeper by talking to players it seems that 80%-85% of the team has been participating in off season work outs this year, and that isn't good enough for a 2-9 team. Frankly only 100% is acceptable. I can tell you that if a kid comments that 80%-85% of the team participated it really means 70%-75%. People always add 10% to anything they do to pad the results.
The offensive line is the biggest question mark going into the season and, Greener was particularly tight lipped about the status of a group of kids that couldn't outbench press their QB last season. If Washington is going to win enough to silence the critics next season they have to score around 35 points per game, and you are not going to do that unless you can control the line of scrimmage.
I feel Ty has a reason for not allowing Greener to give much information to Miller on conditioning and that is because there just hasn't been enough improvement over the off season to get excited about.
I commented in an earlier article that it takes five full years to develop a competitive offensive line. Ty's first recruiting year didn't bring in enough numbers to help the OL, so it is going to take until year five or six of his tenure to turn that around.
All eyes should be on Gilby's OL class. Bulyca, Bush, and Flowers. O'Connor has been moved to defense, and of course we lost Ashby from Ballard who I was never impressed with to attrition.
All three of the remaining guys need to come through this year or we are in big trouble. Bush the ready made Center is now a guard, Bulyca hasn't played much due to injury, but seems to be gaining strength in the weight room according to Greener.
Anyway I think Ted's article is the best so far at pointing at what is currently wrong with Husky football. You can't win consistently if your kids aren't in shape.
The first two weeks of the season will point which direction we are headed. We of course will beat SJS as we should, but Oklahoma, even though they are down, will just pummel us if we aren't in shape. Norman will be really tough not only because it is one of the shrines of the game, but most importantly it will be hot, humid, dusty, and uncomfortable in early September.
Oklahoma started poorly last year, but finished stronger as the season went on, you could see the improvement in the bowl game. They aren't a top ten club going into the season IMHO, but they have talent to be top ten. Comparing UW, and Oklahoma talent wise at this point is comparing grapefruits to grapes.
We will know within the first two weeks whether the team got the job done in the off season. I think there is a lot more work to do, and it all starts with recruiting. 3-4 more wins this year will help recruiting, let's hope that the holdovers can achieve that.
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7 comments:
I agree 100% should be the norm, but I read the article more positively than you did, thinking that participation was higher than in previous years. I could be wrong.
What's the difference? I personally have a lot more faith in Ty recruiting the type of player with the character to work his ass off than I did with with Gilby and Neu, but how does a coach really tell? Ty just seems more like the type not to put up with lame efforts. I'm not sure what's currently up with Chambers but if it's what it looks like, there's a prime example. In the end, short of bankrupting myself, and even that may do no good, all I can do is sit back and watch...and hope. That's one thing I never lose.
cheers,
posidawg ;)
cheers,
Dick
I am sure the participation is higher this year, than in recent years.
I have faith in Ty too, but it will take time to get the old players out, and the new players in. I have always felt it would take him five years to rebuild.
Put together five good off seasons in a row and then you have something.
I think the cool thing about a blog is you get different opinions back, and it is neat when someone looks at the same words and gets a different meaning from them.
The reason I brought the Ted article up is last year at this time he also reported on the conditioning of the team, and the tone was similar to this year.
I also felt that Greener was hiding the specifics and trying to be vague so players wouldn't be singled out. Still it felt less than rosey, and Miller isn't a guy prone to sugar coating.
I think it has been obvious since Tui left that the team has not been in good shape strength and condition wise.
100% should be the norm as Hod says but until the old regime recruits are gone a culture change is slow. Remember the philosophy differences in Lambo to RN when J Stephens got in a freshmans face on practices, thats when I felt we were in trouble. Too bad you can't do the famous JO death march anymore and run the sick,lame and lazy out quicker, although TWs paring of the deadwood 5th yr seniors was a great start (Bandel,Crutchley,Taylor,Benn etc) This might take longer than I like to turn around. My guess is 4 wins minimum, and with luck very good luck 7. The oklahoma game will be the tell on what we are really as a football team. prrbrr
We will see more paring of 5th year seniors this year. The guys at DM feel that he will try to bring in a 25 man class this year.
I think this staff evaluates talent a lot better than Gilby, or Neu did. Even Ty's first tiny class seems to be without a bust, of course it's way too early.
I agree, the Oklahoma game will be a good barometer. I think this years Oklahoma team is on a par with last years UCLA, or Oregon team. We have chance to win if they make mistakes, and we don't. It all depends on if the offensive line can get going.
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