How UW Football Bottomed Out Under Jimmy Lake - A Fun Read

[Steven A]

At first, I thought he might have survived had he not shoved Fuavai, but this seems to indicate otherwise.  Dang, I was looking forward to years of prowess under Lake.

 

How UW Football Bottomed Out Under Jimmy Lake (msn.com)

[Charles Fischer]

Good article, and goes to show what a crap-shoot it is with hiring coaches.  You really do not know what you are getting, and I guess that applies to Oregon as well!

 

And THANKS for finding and posting it!

[30Duck]

As Kalen DeBoer continues to sweep up the mess,

 

 This opening shows the difference of where Washington is, and trying to get up from, and where Oregon is now. Petersen was a 6 year break from decades long black hole for the Huskies. But, Ole Pete saw the darkness was coming back and got out of there.

 

[jrw]

A perfect illustration of the Peter Principle. 

[David Marsh]

I was saying it during the offseasons when Lake was making those hires he was making the wrong hires for the wrong reasons. He opted to go with who was safe (or at least felt safe) rather than a risk.

 

Donovan was a huge risk but to Lake apparently his only requirement was NFL guy and that's what he wanted and what felt safe. Granted it feels like all Lake wanted was NFL guys and felt that would be enough to do the recruiting work for him. 

 

I didn't know how many times he was rejected though. 

 

Say what you will about Cristobal, he certainly has his own major flaws, but he knew he needed solid recruiters and he was thorough in the hiring process. 

 

Lanning also feels like he knows exactly what he wants in the hiring process and is moving at decent pace. Not as fast as fans would like but getting the right hire is more important than the fast hire. 

 

Speaking of hirings... Isn't it interesting from an institutional level the mentality of both the Oregon and Washington schools. 

 

Washington choose a safe option, or relatively safe in Kelan DeBoer and Oregon chose to take a bigger risk with arguably a much higher reward on Dan Lanning.

 

Oregon is playing to win and win big. Washington is playing to not lose. Completely different mentalities between the programs.

[Washington Waddler]

     Was at Hec Edmundson pavilion with my wife for the 2019 Oregon UW men’s basketball game, aka Payton Pritchard’s “I own this house” closing argument.  As halftime approached, the crowd began thumping their tails uncontrollably and peeing in their seats in anticipation of the introduction of their new head football coach Jimmy Lake.

 

     There is nothing new or unusual about using a campus sports event to unveil a new coach, and new coaches normally use the moment to simply thank the administration and crowd for their support and promise the kind of effort that will bring victories and championships to the school — nothing more. Best to leave them with a solid first impression that evokes class and the anticipation of better things to come.

 

     Not Jimmy. He seized the moment like a carnival barker conning a crowd of fools into buying tickets to see a two-headed tattooed lady.  His ‘I own this place’ opening gambit was followed by an awkward TV game show host-like climb into the stands to ‘mix’ with his frothing followers that lasted well into the start of the 2nd half. 

 

     My wife looked at me and I at her in blank amazement at this remarkable display of cluelessness. 

[Haywarduck]

I take offense to the title of your thread. The idea Washington has bottomed out is an opinion which has little basis in fact.

 

Parroting the title to an ill-informed pundit will only encourage the dawg faithful to believe there is no where to go but up. 

 

I would add the last time the dawgs won 4 games the next season they didn't win even 1. 

 

I know it is the season to bring cheer, but the dawgs only deserve to fear the future.

[Guest KingT]

Anyone who wonders about Cristobal should just review the tape against UW, Fresno St, Stanford, Arizona and Stony Brook, to realize that he just wasn't up to task. You have a arch rival like UW and you have a chance to literally smoke them like they did you, and you simply just get by. Those three games tell you all you need to know about Mario and his coaching ability. Aside from Fresno St., those teams were all really bad this year. We may not see a UW team this bad for another 10+ years.

[TheRunningDuck]

I hope this headline is wrong. It would be great if the Washington program has not yet bottomed out.

[UtahDuck]

On 12/26/2021 at 11:30 PM, David Marsh said:

I was saying it during the offseasons when Lake was making those hires he was making the wrong hires for the wrong reasons. He opted to go with who was safe (or at least felt safe) rather than a risk.

 

Say what you will about Cristobal, he certainly has his own major flaws, but he knew he needed solid recruiters and he was thorough in the hiring process. 

 

Lanning also feels like he knows exactly what he wants in the hiring process and is moving at decent pace. Not as fast as fans would like but getting the right hire is more important than the fast hire. 

 

Speaking of hirings... Isn't it interesting from an institutional level the mentality of both the Oregon and Washington schools. 

 

Washington choose a safe option, or relatively safe in Kelan DeBoer and Oregon chose to take a bigger risk with arguably a much higher reward on Dan Lanning.

 

Oregon is playing to win and win big. Washington is playing to not lose. Completely different mentalities between the programs.

Their is so much I want to comment here because they are all such great points.

 

To start most Oregon fan's new the hire with Lake was going to be Helfrich 2.0... He had been tied to peterson since 2012 and had never been a sole DC. The fact that UW thought to promote him says a lot about the university and jen Cohen(UW AD). 

 

As another note between cristobal and Lanning VS. Lake and DeBoer. the prior to completely understand that the most important factor in being a successful college program is recruiting. I think cristobal made enough of his own errors in the play calling and offensive design but that doesn't change or dispute the fact that only teams with jimmies and joes make the playoffs. Lake continued the legacy of peterson of treating every offer as gold. From my understanding DeBoer is doing the same.

 

If lanning can come in and continue(giving him a break for the current class) the recruiting of cristobal and DeBoer pushes the same standard of Our Kind of Guy's than Oregon will continue to push ahead and while i don't think DeBoer is as bad at X's and O's as lake was they won't push for the conference/division.

 

As a final note, While oregon's staff is not done so it can't be judged to date. Can we talk about UW... Specifically in the retaining of both Junior Adams at WR and Scott Huff at OL. These are not good coaches. UW's Oline has been one of the worst in conference for about 3 years. They are not fundamentally sound and consistently make errors in protection. I am so happy to see him return. As for adams his Wideouts consistently look like the classes from 2016-2018 at oregon. They have no one in the room to catch the ball and the ones that stay aren't great. 

[David Marsh]

On 12/27/2021 at 8:55 AM, UtahDuck said:

To start most Oregon fan's new the hire with Lake was going to be Helfrich 2.0.

 

I respectfully disagree with this... It has appeared by so many fans and I feel it usually comes with a more surface comparison rather than a deeper dive into the two. 

 

Helfrich was an ok recruiter and we usually bash him more on this front because of his misses than his hits. In this four recruiting classes (I used 247 sports because I was having issues getting the class ranks from rivals) under Helfrich the classes were 19, 21, 16, 27. 

 

Under Kelly it was 30, 12, 12, 14 ... So a drop off but in truth Helfrich was doing what Kelly was (minus Willie Lyles) and with some minor but impactful sanctions. 

 

Helfrich did promote Pellum to DC but this was also fully inline with the Oregon way and continuity at the time. It failed but not as bad as the Hoke hire failed. 

 

Lake inherited a good recruiting class and then bombed the following classes. He promoted from within against the advisement of others. 

 

Lake at Washington was a massive failure. Helfrich was a mostly successful coach at Oregon and at any other program or even at Oregon a decade earlier he would still be employed as the HC. 

 

Just my little rant about the comparison. I could probably write a whole article on it. 

 

Oh and Helfrich did put Mariota in position to win a Heisman and he did make a playoff appearance and won a rose bowl. 

 

If you had to pick between the two Helfrich over Lake all day everyday and without a second thought. 

[UtahDuck]

On 12/27/2021 at 1:33 PM, David Marsh said:

 

I respectfully disagree with this... It has appeared by so many fans and I feel it usually comes with a more surface comparison rather than a deeper dive into the two. 

 

Helfrich was an ok recruiter and we usually bash him more on this front because of his misses than his hits. In this four recruiting classes (I used 247 sports because I was having issues getting the class ranks from rivals) under Helfrich the classes were 19, 21, 16, 27. 

 

Under Kelly it was 30, 12, 12, 14 ... So a drop off but in truth Helfrich was doing what Kelly was (minus Willie Lyles) and with some minor but impactful sanctions. 

 

Helfrich did promote Pellum to DC but this was also fully inline with the Oregon way and continuity at the time. It failed but not as bad as the Hoke hire failed. 

 

Lake inherited a good recruiting class and then bombed the following classes. He promoted from within against the advisement of others. 

 

Lake at Washington was a massive failure. Helfrich was a mostly successful coach at Oregon and at any other program or even at Oregon a decade earlier he would still be employed as the HC. 

 

Just my little rant about the comparison. I could probably write a whole article on it. 

 

Oh and Helfrich did put Mariota in position to win a Heisman and he did make a playoff appearance and won a rose bowl. 

 

If you had to pick between the two Helfrich over Lake all day everyday and without a second thought. 

I guess I should clarify what I meant by Helf 2.0.

 

More or less I just meant enhancing all of Helfs bad qualities. Locker room contro - pretty bad. Coaching hires - bad. Recruiting - meh. 

 

Everything that Helfrich did "poorly" Lake did even worse. Pellum and Hoke were awful hires but compared to Jon Donovan not bad. Add in that because Lake hadn't been anywhere when it came to replacing position coaches all he did was hire internally with his analysts. 

 

Recruiting(i like 247 overall due to the ease of their interface). Helfrich wasn't great and we have to remember the university was limited due to kelly/willie lyles. what baffles me is the drop in recruiting even after attending the playoffs. Helfrich wasn't a great recruiter if you could even consider him one. he solely relied on the university selling itself(which doesn't cut it). With that said, Lake was worse, as reflected on he tried relying on UW to sell itself and when you haven't won anything in 20 years that is pretty hard. 

 

Locker Room, I think helfrich's era speaks for itself. I think he is a likeable guy but was never cut to lead and this is present in the lack of control. But man between the number of players that left UW in his timeline Lake had zero control ever at UW. 

 

Overall I would definitely take Helf any day of the week over Lake. I will say I do think helf was really good at evaluating QB talent. He is definitely missed in that regard at oregon right now.

[Haywarduck]

UtahDuck, Bottomline never compare an Oregon coach, player or really anything to something at Washington. It just doesn't go well.

 

I have to admit you did make some good points though.

 

[30Duck]

On 12/27/2021 at 1:13 PM, Haywarduck said:

Bottomline never compare an Oregon coach, player or really anything to something at Washington. It just doesn't go well.

 

 It won't go well for Washington. But as far as Oregon goes it's low hanging fruit.

 Justin Herbert> Jacob Eason

[David Marsh]

On 12/27/2021 at 12:55 PM, UtahDuck said:

Everything that Helfrich did "poorly" Lake did even worse.

I can get behind this statement more. 

[David Marsh]

On 12/27/2021 at 12:55 PM, UtahDuck said:

Overall I would definitely take Helf any day of the week over Lake. I will say I do think helf was really good at evaluating QB talent. He is definitely missed in that regard at oregon right now.

I would say the most fundamental mistake that Helfrich made (more than the DC hires) was giving up coaching qbs himself. 

 

Frost did a decent job with already good to great quarterbacks. Frost failed to get any of the new freshmen ready for game time. 

 

Herbert had a different QB coach entirely in David Yost for his freshman year. 

[shawnski]

On 12/27/2021 at 6:35 AM, Haywarduck said:

I take offense to the title of your thread. 

I also take offense!

 

They can get a whole lot WORSE 

And the bottom can't be seen with binoculars 

[Orebcker]

On 12/26/2021 at 11:59 PM, Washington Waddler said:

     Was at Hec Edmundson pavilion with my wife for the 2019 Oregon UW men’s basketball game, aka Payton Pritchard’s “I own this house” closing argument.  As halftime approached, the crowd began thumping their tails uncontrollably and peeing in their seats in anticipation of the introduction of their new head football coach Jimmy Lake.

 

     There is nothing new or unusual about using a campus sports event to unveil a new coach, and new coaches normally use the moment to simply thank the administration and crowd for their support and promise the kind of effort that will bring victories and championships to the school — nothing more. Best to leave them with a solid first impression that evokes class and the anticipation of better things to come.

 

     Not Jimmy. He seized the moment like a carnival barker conning a crowd of fools into buying tickets to see a two-headed tattooed lady.  His ‘I own this place’ opening gambit was followed by an awkward TV game show host-like climb into the stands to ‘mix’ with his frothing followers that lasted well into the start of the 2nd half. 

 

     My wife looked at me and I at her in blank amazement at this remarkable display of cluelessness. 

“I wanna have a huge spring game crowd come this April  (just like Oregon)”. 

 

[Charles Fischer]

Wow.  That guy lies right out of the gate (in the video above) and the fans even know it!

[Jon Joseph]

On 12/26/2021 at 6:09 PM, Steven A said:

At first, I thought he might have survived had he not shoved Fuavai, but this seems to indicate otherwise.  Dang, I was looking forward to years of prowess under Lake.

 

How UW Football Bottomed Out Under Jimmy Lake (msn.com)

 

I also think Coach Pete recruiting OKGs (our kind of guys) and not going after more highly ranked players, helped lead to this decline. And UW could not keep its top players at home. Lake like Helfrich, at least after Helf's first season, was the easy and the wrong hire. Some assistants make great HCs, others do not. The way of this world in every endeavor.