UCLA Football Preview: Huskies Look to Be Sliding Under Lake
The resurgence of the Huskies under Chris Petersen is clearly over and Washington appears to be slipping in the conference under Jimmy Lake.
This evening, the UCLA Bruins will take on the Washington Huskies. Through five games, the Huskies are 2-3 overall and 1-1 in conference play. While the Huskies appear on paper to have a weaker team than they did just a few years ago under former head coach Chris Petersen, tonight’s game has the potential to be a trap game for the Bruins.
That’s because UCLA hosts Oregon at the Rose Bowl next week in what could be the biggest game of the Chip Kelly era.
Before the Bruins can focus on the Ducks, they need to make sure they don’t fall to the Huskies in Seattle today.
Coaching Staff
Jimmy Lake was Chris Petersen’s defensive coordinator when Petersen abruptly stepped down at the end of the 2019 season. Lake had coached with Petersen at Boise State where he was the team’s DB coach. When Petersen took over the Huskies in 2014, Lake came to UW in the same capacity. In 2016, Lake added the title of co-defensive coordinator before being named the defensive coordinator in 2018.
Lake led the Huskies to a 3-1 record in his first season, but two of those wins came against Oregon State and Arizona. The only quality win was a 24-21 victory over Utah. So far this season, the Huskies still don’t have a quality win. They thumped Arkansas State, but you’d expect that, and they needed overtime to get past UC Berkeley.
Meanwhile, their losses under Lake this season have been mounting. They actually lost to Montana, an FCS school, as well as Michigan and Oregon State. Under Lake, the defense seems to play well. They haven’t allowed more than 31 points in a game this year. Their problem, at least early on, was an inability to score enough points to win. For instance, Washington only scored seven points against Montana and ten against Michigan.
Normally, you might see that under a first-year offensive coordinator, but Huskies offensive coordinator John Donovan is in his second season on Lake’s staff. Prior to coming to Washington, he was an offensive assistant for the Jacksonville Jaguars and the offensive coordinator at both Penn State and Vanderbilt.
On the other side of the ball, Bob Gregory has replace Pete Kwiatkowski as the defensive coordinator this year. Gregory has been on the Washington staff since Petersen took over the Huskies, but he’s been mostly a position coach until now, though he was also the Special Teams Coordinator since 2016. So, you’d expect that Washington would be adjusting to having a new defensive coordinator, but Gregory’s defense has been solid all season so far. They’ve only allowed more than 31 points once at that came in their overtime game against UC Berkeley. So, I expect Gregory’s defense to challenge the Bruins’ offense tonight.
Special Teams
Junior kicker Peyton Henry will handle the field goal and PAT duties for the Huskies. So far, Henry is a perfect 13-for-13 on PATs and four for six on field goal attempts. His only two misses have come from 47 yards or more.
While sophomore Tim Horn had handled most of the kickoff duties in Washington’s first five games, he entered the transfer portal rather than redshirt this season. As a result, Henry will probably also handled the kickoffs for the Huskies.
Senior Race Porter is the team’s starting punter. He’s averaging 47.1 yards per punt with a long of 67. Only one of his punts has been a touchback while he’s pinned teams inside the 20 seven times.
The Washington return guys don’t appear to be too dangerous. Trent McDuffie has taken six of the team’s eight punts and his longest was just nine yards. Giles Jackson returned the other two and his longest is just five yards.
Jackson is also the team’s primary kick returner, having fielded five of six kickoffs. He’s averaging just 16.8 yards per return with a long of 20 yards while Cameron Davis returned the other kickoff for just 14 yards.
All of this seems to show that the Huskies might be better off just going with fair catches all the time, but we’ll see what they do against the Bruins later today.
Go Bruins!!!
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