Huskies could win, given time
Extra prep gives Washington a chance vs. No. 1 Alabama
Between the road game environment they’ll face at the Georgia Dome, the questions about their schedule and the overall dominance of the team they’re facing, there are plenty of reasons to dismiss the Washington Huskies’ chances of upsetting topranked Alabama in the College Football Playoff semifinals.
They’re new on the national scene, a team that has been completely remade in three short years and delivered a Pac-12 title ahead of schedule.
But as good as No. 4 Washington has been this season, it is a decided and deserved underdog, the kind of program that made a quick leap from 7-6 to 12-1 and might need to take one or two swings at this Playoff deal before being able to fight in Alabama’s weight class.
But Washington seemingly has one factor in its favor. Starting with his very first team at Boise State, which upset Oklahoma in a legendary Fiesta Bowl, head coach Chris Petersen’s reputation for getting teams to peak after a long layoff has reached almost mythical proportions.
In addition to the Oklahoma win, Boise State under Petersen beat TCU in the 2010 Fiesta Bowl as 71⁄ point underdogs and scored season-opening victories
against three ranked teams in Oregon, Virginia Tech and Georgia.
Though Boise State’s success against those teams wasn’t much of a surprise after a while, it was a program that relished playing the name-brand programs and beating them regularly when Petersen had multiple weeks to prepare.
“He’s just really good — three days, two days, one day, six months — I think he’s just really good,” said Washington receivers coach Bush Hamdan, who was a backup quarterback at Boise State for the Oklahoma upset. “We felt we belonged in the big game, and we were just ecstatic to get an opportunity to showcase who we were on a national stage.”
Spend a few days around the Huskies, and that rallying cry sounds familiar, particularly in this situation against college football’s gold-standard program.
Washington players and coaches readily admit they have never faced anything like what they will see in Atlanta. But they also believe they belong in this game and will do what is necessary to give themselves a chance.
“It’s not so much about Alabama,” receiver John Ross said. “It’s about who we are and how well we prepare and the things we’ve been doing because we’ve created something special this whole season.”
Much of that focus goes back to Petersen, whose reputation for being taciturn and evasive in public comments around big games plays into the narrative that there’s something mysterious behind the curtain.
More than likely, that’s just what Petersen wants his opponents to think. Maybe the special sauce is simply an amplification of what his staff does anyway: grinding through tape, fine-tuning game plans, working on fundamentals.
“It comes back to our preparation, and everybody knows Coach Pete is a very disciplined, detailed coach,” co-defensive coordinator and defensive backs coach Jimmy Lake said. “So now when you have more time to be detailed and prepared, that’s probably right in his wheelhouse.”
But the idea that Washington will come out against Alabama with a totally different offense and a bag full of gadget plays? That seems unlikely; in fact, Petersen’s reputation for trickery is somewhat overwrought.
There’s no doubt the Oklahoma game is largely remembered for three creative plays that helped Boise State win: a hook-and-lateral that tied the score on fourth-and-18 with 18 seconds left, a halfback pass for a touchdown in overtime and a Statue of Liberty for the winning two-point conversion.
Thus, Petersen’s renown for always having something up his sleeve was born and became part of every subsequent opponent’s scouting report over the last decade.
“I don’t think we’ve run that many this year compared to some other years, but they get all the attention,” offensive coordinator Jonathan Smith said. “When they work, they’re great; when they don’t, people feel like we’re wasting time. It’s part of our package, but we run regular plays way more than trick plays.
“We’ve had them in each game; we just haven’t called all that many of them. We’ve gotten to some some later in the year that had some success, but probably on average we’re talking one a game this year.”
And Washington is adamant that its success against Alabama largely will be based on the same sort of balanced approach that worked so well the entire season.
“We’ll probably have some tweaks here and there like we do every other week,” quarterback Jake Browning said. “But you can’t let a good team get you out of your rhythm that got you there.”
For Petersen, though, there are undeniable advantages to having nearly a month to prepare for Alabama. But it’s less about making huge changes, more about getting healthy, stressing the fundamentals and sharpening edges of what Washington already does well.
“You don’t have to rush to make decisions like you would normally on a game week where you have a day and a half to say, ‘OK, this is what we’re doing and we’re going with it,’ ” Lake said. “Now you can sit back and go, ‘You know what, let’s really think about this.’ ”
For Washington’s staff, which has largely been together since Boise State, the approach has stood the test of time. Petersen is 6-3 in bowls and 9-3 in season openers.
Washington might not have the same amount of elite talent or physical size as Alabama, but its preparation will be second to none, which is enough to engender hope around here that the Peach Bowl can indeed be won in the face of significant odds, the kind of odds this staff has faced — and beaten — before.
“I think Coach Pete always has a good plan,” Smith said. “We do have a little more time to prepare, but so do they. I don’t know the exact science on why we’ve had some success (off long layoffs), but it’s been working.”
“Coach Pete is a very disciplined, detailed coach. So now when you have more time to be detailed and prepared, that’s probably right in his wheelhouse.” Huskies co-defensive coordinator and defensive backs coach Jimmy Lake