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2022 Transfer Thread - It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

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Bevo

Bevo 13516

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11 minutes ago, Spider2YBanana said:

In fairness, our DC might be regarded, so let's hold off. He finally began giving Jaylan Ford more PT later in the season, so he's a little slow. 

https://www.uwdawgpound.com/2021/1/20/22241034/the-end-of-the-pete-kwiatkowski-era-washington-huskies-football

The End of the Pete Kwiatkowski Era

Share this on Twitter (opens i Uncertainty and instability have defined the last year in the world and in UW sports. From Chris Petersen’s shocking departure in December, 2019, almost nothing that has happened in the last 14 months has gone according to plan. Even with uncertainty at an all-time high, Defensive Coordinator Pete Kwiatkowski seemed to be the rock of stability, the connective tissue across generations of head coaches. Even that stability was upended this week when Coach K accepted the Defensive Coordinator job at Texas under new coach Steve Sarkisian.

There are countless stats and anecdotes that support Kwiatkowski’s resume as one of the best defensive coordinators in the sport. In his seven years as the Husky DC, he has had the #1 defense in the Pac-12 five times. In his 11 years as a DC (at UW or Boise St.), he has had defenses ranked in the top-15 nationally eight times. Even in an offense-first era in college football, his defenses have an active steak of 75 straight games without giving up more than 35 points. He is not known as a top-end recruiter, but he has still sent 10 defensive players to the NFL in the first two rounds of the draft during his UW tenure. Kwiatkowski will always be a tier below Jim Lambright on the all-time UW Coordinator list because the latter won a national title, but Coach K has the advantage in plenty of other areas.

Part of Coach K’s legacy to date is his teams’ overall success. He was defensive coach on two undefeated Boise St. teams that won the Fiesta Bowl, including the famous win over Oklahoma. He was a foundational building block of the Husky coaching staff that won the Pac-12 twice in three years and went to three straight New Year’s Day Bowl Games. While the UW offense vacillated between elite and ordinary during Chris Petersen’s run, Kwiatkowski’s defenses were steadily, consistently great. The question was never whether the Huskies would slow down the opponent, it was whether the offense would score enough to keep up. Chris Petersen led an offense that was great at times and he deserves loads of credit for the team’s organization and chemistry through his years. At the same time, Petersen is an offensive mind and the team’s most predictable strength was its defense; Kwiatkowski deserves credit for that.

If there’s one game that defines Kwiatkowski’s tenure, it’s the 2018 Pac-12 Championship Game. Pac-12 South Champs Utah came in having won seven in a row with a much improved offense. The Huskies annihilated them. The Utes scored three points on 188 total yards and threw three interceptions. The only touchdown of the game was Byron Murphy’s interception return, and the Dawgs won 10-3. A football game in 2018 ended with a final score of 10-3. The one-sided Apple Cup rivalry was similarly emblematic of Kwiatkowski’s success. In a tenure that mostly overlapped with Mike Leach’s Washington State tenure that rewrote that Cougar offensive record book, the Dawgs went 6-0 and never gave up more than 17 points to WSU.Kwiatkowski’s dominance over Leach was part of a larger standard of success against spread and Air Raid offenses. Coach K’s defense is versatile, but definitely designed with spread offenses in mind. He almost always keeps at least five defensive backs on the field with two traditional down linemen. He gets the tactics right, too. His defensive backs know their assignments and tackle well. His rush ends seal the edge and don’t let runners get to the corner. There are drawbacks to his approach; UW has notably struggled against Stanford’s bigger fronts that hunt mismatches against smaller defenses. Still, he built a defense that specializes in stopping the vast majority of offenses. Luckily for him and his new fans, he brings that specialty defense to a team whose arch rival runs a derivation of Leach’s offense.

Kwiatkowski didn’t take the Texas job just to neutralize Lincoln Riley and Oklahoma, but with a day to think it over, the reasons to take the job have become clearer. The biggest reason, of course, is money. Early rumors suggest that Kwiatkowski would be guaranteed $6 million at Texas, likely over a three-year contract. UW already stretched its budget to pay him $1 million last year, so doubling his salary with added job security is not a bad route to take for an experienced coach who reportedly has little interested in a head coaching position.

The money means more than just Kwiatkowski’s salary. If you’re a believer in college football’s financial determinism- and on-field results show a pretty strong correlation between revenue and program success-, then you probably recognize that Texas has been a sleeping giant over the last decade. Oklahoma has surged past the Longhorns despite having far less revenue and an inferior in-state talent base. In fact, Texas has the highest annual revenue in the country at $156 million according to the Department of Education’s most recent reports (UW is 15th at $84 million). Alabama and Clemson have dominated the sport because they found great coaches, held onto them, and paid enough to hire the assistants they wanted. Texas can do the last two if they can find their Nick Saban or Dabo Swinney. Will Sarkisian be that guy? It’s hard to blame Kwiatkowski for doubling his salary to find out.Meanwhile, UW faces a series of existential questions in its search for a replacement. Will Jimmy Lake look in-house for a replacement to preserve continuity, or cast a wider net outside the program? Lake famously treated NFL experience as a prerequisite for his Offensive Coordinator, will he do the same on the defensive side? The odds of finding someone better at defensive X’s and O’s are slim, so will Lake try to find a more dynamic recruiter who can make up some of the tactical gap with an elevated skill level? What role will Lake, as a defensive specialist, play in leading the defense going forward?

For me, the disappointment of Kwiatkowski’s departure has less to do with the relative strength of his eventual replacement and more to do with the programmatic transition it represents. When Petersen shockingly stepped aside, we could see continuity in Lake, a ready-made head coach in waiting. When Lake dismissed Bush Hamdan to bring in his own Offensive Coordinator, it felt like good disruption since the offense had languished behind the defense leading up to that change. Kwiatkowski’s departure does not have the same silver lining. He was the connective tissue to Petersen and the best days of Husky football in the last quarter-century. Maybe Lake will reach new heights in his own era, but Kwiatkowski’s departure definitely places us squarely in the Lake Era and outside any echo of the Petersen Era. That’s the kind of instability that scares me as a fan.

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Mr Shrimp Unlimited
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Big Woodrows

Big Woodrows 4195

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On3's USC site:

"Two sources said they would be shocked if [Caleb Williams] didn’t commit to the Trojans and one told us both Williams were USC’s to lose. But it was not a done deal as of 6pm PT...Again, we haven’t been told this is a done deal as of this evening. But based off what we’re hearing, we’d be surprised if Caleb and Mario Williams don’t end up at USC."

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Bevo14

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7 minutes ago, tokamak said:

Riley really gonna fuck the corpse of OU's program. Maybe he's not such a bad guy after all.

He's looking less like a dickhead by the minute. 

Speaking of dickheads, I just got a kickass boxset of Philip k dick novels waiting to be discussed in case this thread mutates in that direction. 

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Hookem2147

Hookem2147 20925

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Holy crap Terrence Cooks was never someone who was going to play as a freshman. He had the potential to be a good player down the line but he was nowhere close to college ready and was a summer enrollee. He was a project who was a redshirt/special teams player as a freshman at best. The fact he or his family expected him to get significant playing time as a freshman means the prior staff probably did a poor job communicating expectations during his recruitment. I don’t care how bad the LB play was, he wasn’t going to be the answer in 2021.

Also, Jaylan Ford played off and on throughout the first half of the season and looked lost. The light flickered against OSU and then he followed up that performance by looking lost again against Baylor. He closed the year strong with a few solid performances but let’s stop pretending like we had Ray Lewis on the bench 3/4ths of the year.

This defensive staff deserves plenty of blame and they made plenty of questionable personnel decisions, but the LB play was awful because the players were awful/young/inconsistent or a combination of things. Now whether they develop what they have into serviceable play or find outside help after spring ball is probably going to be one of the most important keys to the season.

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Napoleon

Napoleon 8600

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12 hours ago, Professor Chesney said:


image.gif.cff59f7ee1811980f4539df38b8772cb.gif

You can tell that W. played baseball (or Jai alai), because his focus on a small, rapidly moving object was quite advanced. Perhaps the next president could have avoided the two shoes, but the two after that would have been absolutely clobbered by the shoes. 

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WBT

WBT 20410

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6 hours ago, Big Woodrows said:

On3's USC site:

"Two sources said they would be shocked if [Caleb Williams] didn’t commit to the Trojans and one told us both Williams were USC’s to lose. But it was not a done deal as of 6pm PT...Again, we haven’t been told this is a done deal as of this evening. But based off what we’re hearing, we’d be surprised if Caleb and Mario Williams don’t end up at USC."

But does Caleb know about Double Eagle and Tech's new OC?

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mwaadeeb

mwaadeeb 1151

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7 hours ago, Hookem2147 said:

Holy crap Terrence Cooks was never someone who was going to play as a freshman. He had the potential to be a good player down the line but he was nowhere close to college ready and was a summer enrollee. He was a project who was a redshirt/special teams player as a freshman at best. The fact he or his family expected him to get significant playing time as a freshman means the prior staff probably did a poor job communicating expectations during his recruitment. I don’t care how bad the LB play was, he wasn’t going to be the answer in 2021.

Also, Jaylan Ford played off and on throughout the first half of the season and looked lost. The light flickered against OSU and then he followed up that performance by looking lost again against Baylor. He closed the year strong with a few solid performances but let’s stop pretending like we had Ray Lewis on the bench 3/4ths of the year.

This defensive staff deserves plenty of blame and they made plenty of questionable personnel decisions, but the LB play was awful because the players were awful/young/inconsistent or a combination of things. Now whether they develop what they have into serviceable play or find outside help after spring ball is probably going to be one of the most important keys to the season.

Hol-up, I was told all the best players weren't playing because the coaches were super-dumb.

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Elmer_Fudd

Elmer_Fudd 22084

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2 minutes ago, Sir Ulrich said:

This works too. Then aggy will finally have an early season opponent with a pulse

It'll be interesting to see how Christobal builds that team for next year.  Saw something about the starting CB from Oregon that entered the portal is likely Miami bound.  IDK what all they lose from last year's team.  Game is in CS, but that'll be a better team than Colorado.

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