Coach Sark's a Micromanager, and Other Husky Practice Observations
"Husky Fever!" courtesy of Seattlest Flickr pool member sprizee, whose photography we all appear to love today.
First, though, let us tell you our favorite thing from last week. Driving in Laurelhurst (dodging the dangerous Children's Hospital traffic--damn those sick kids!) we saw a truck with one of those Washington State Cougar-themed personalized license plates. The plate read: "LOSTBET." HA!
The damn guy drove away before we could deploy our cameraphone, but we assure you it was real. Ah, football. Now, let's jump to conclusions!
1) Coach Steve Sarkisian is a micromanager. For good and bad. Good: He was directly involved in many of the offensive run-throughs. This seems like a bright idea, considering he's the mastermind of an offense that's brand-new to Husky players. Bad: He hectored a ball boy for putting balls in the wrong place. Can't someone else be supervising the student managers?
2) Jake Locker is by far the best of the four Husky quarterbacks. His accuracy, velocity, and release are all noticeably better than his UW competition. Whether he'll be noticeably better than Pac-10 competition, we don't know. And we know it's faint praise to say he's better than 4/13-TD/INT-ratio-having Ronnie Fouch, true frosh Keith Price, and walk-on Taylor Bean. Still, the fact that he's obviously outshining his fellow QBs is a good thing.
3) The secondary is still atrocious. Husky receivers made play after play in practice, and kept up a steady stream of trash talk that was getting into the heads of their defensive counterparts. All this brashness from a receiving corps that managed just three TD catches all of last season. Wethinks it may be the opposition, which does not bode well. The only corner who looked even remotely competent was Quinton Richardson, and even he got beat badly a couple of times.
4) Daniel Te'o-Nesheim (r.) is a beast. In practice he's being constantly double-teamed but is still getting good penetration. (Ed: That's what she said.) Even against the Huskies' O-line, that's impressive. The nation is beginning to notice DTN.
The Dawgs' nationally-televised season opener against #9 LSU is just ten days away (eep!), and while we wish we could warm up against a non-entity like Idaho (game 2, on the 12th), we have to say we're getting pretty excited.
We'll also have some nice appetizers that week--the Sounders' U.S. Open Cup final on Wednesday, the Oregon/Boise St. showdown on Thursday, and opening night of high school football season on Friday. Point being, now's the time to tell your ladyfriend you've got a "big presentation" coming up on the following Monday, or some such obfuscation to keep your evenings free for one of the better sports weeks of the year--and should the Huskies manage an upset (remember, this is college football, anything can happen), it may be the best week of the decade.
