Washington fell short against Alabama, but the Huskies are on the right path
ATLANTA, Ga.—Look, there’s no denying it: getting your tail handed to you hurts, even when the oddsmakers expected it, even when your family expected it, even when you probably expected it. But the hurt that the Washington Huskies feel at getting smacked around by the Alabama Crimson Tide has to be somewhat mollified by the fact that Washington is even in the College Football Playoff at all.
Eight years ago, both Alabama and Washington posted perfect regular seasons. But here’s the rub: while Alabama, in its second season under head coach Nick Saban, went 12-0, Washington went 0-12. Certainly Alabama’s run of titles since then has been more impressive, but the fact that Washington is now standing on the same field as the Tide is its own significant success story. (As with everything else in college football, when you’re talking successful runs, there’s Alabama and there’s everyone else.)
This isn’t to say Washington should be just happy to be here—that’s the kind of talk that doesn’t get you back next year—but what the Huskies have accomplished in recent years bears noting. “Any time you don’t win the game, you feel really not good,” Huskies head coach Chris Petersen said, his syntax as disjointed as his offensive line. “But I think when you step back and look at the big picture, the bar’s been moved up, been moved forward. Kids know it. We go back to square one, ground zero in a few weeks when we start training again.”
That bar now rests at the top of the Pac-12, where the Huskies led in both points scored (578) and points allowed (224). That bar now sits at the top of the FBS, where the Huskies ranked 10th overall in defense.
Consider: Washington’s defense allowed Alabama only 17 points (7 came on a pick-six), the second-fewest points allowed by any Bama opponent (after LSU’s 10). The vaunted Alabama offensive line damn near came apart at the hands of the Husky D; only an otherworldly performance from fourth-string Alabama running back Bo Scarbrough kept Alabama’s offense from complete embarrassment.
Offensively, matters are a bit trickier. Jake Browning will return in the 2017 season as a junior, and it’ll take him quite awhile to recover from the five-sack beating he endured at the hands of Alabama’s defense. The knock on Browning coming into the game was that he fattened the stats that put him sixth in Heisman voting early in games, then slid hard in the final quarter. That didn’t hold true on Saturday; Browning ran a near-flawless drive to score the Huskies’ first touchdown seven minutes into the game, then never maintained any kind of serious drive until garbage time. Running back Myles Gaskin, also a sophomore, brought 1,339 yards into this game, and could manage only 34 more.
Petersen just concluded his third season at the helm of Washington, and in 2016 he almost matched the win total of his first two seasons combined. Petersen has long known how to hang with bigger dogs when overmatched; witness his string of victories at Boise State, which included wins over Oklahoma, TCU, Georgia, Oregon, and Virginia Tech. Now, he’s building a big-name, big-budget program in his own image, and you get the feeling he’s very close to breaking through. He’ll have to go through Alabama to do it, but at least now he knows how thick that wall will be.
“Hopefully they’ve gained good confidence from this season,” Petersen said of his team, “but I think there’s also some lessons to be learned in this game … what we have to do to truly compete on this elite level.”
As for the team itself, there are no illusions, no good-job, good-effort. The season, receiver Dante Pettis said, “went above other people’s expectations. [Ours] were to win a national championship, and we fell short of that. It is good to get this far, but we fell short of what we wanted to do.”
The way Washington is headed, he’ll get another chance.
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Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports and the author of EARNHARDT NATION, on sale now at Amazon or wherever books are sold. Contact him at jay.busbee@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter or on Facebook.
