Chris Petersen Opens Up About Surprising Decision to Leave Coaching

Chris Petersen was considered one of college football’s elite coaches, ushering Boise State into an unlikely national power and then rebuilding Washington, reaching the College Football Playoff with the Pac-12 program in 2016.

At the end of the 2019 season, Petersen made the fairly surprising announcement that he would step down from coaching, taking an advisory role within UW athletics. At 55, he was still in the prime of his coaching years. 

“I’ll be a Husky for life, but now is the right time for me to step away from my head coaching duties, and recharge,” he said at the time.

Petersen appeared on Wednesday’s episode of The BluePrint With Dr. Erik Korem, and went into detail on his decision to step down at Washington, as well as his admittedly “embarrassing” reason for taking the job with the Huskies after eight seasons at the helm at Boise State.

Late in his tenure at Boise State, Petersen says he grew “cynical” and became “short with people,” including the press. Rather than address those problems head-on, he says he took the Washington job to trade in the problems at Boise for “a new set of problems.”

“I am embarrassed to sit here and tell you today that was my thought process, that I was thinking that I’m going to take my old problems, throw them away and get a new set of problems at Washington, and that was going to solve my problems,” Petersen told Korem, via FootballScoop.

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After five years at Washington, Petersen realized he never actually allowed himself to reset and develop a “great gameplan for life.”

“I go to Washington and it’s numbing and it’s blurry for almost two years but you’re in the fight so hard and it’s a new set of problems,” he said. “Then again, I get to the end of year five and I’m starting to have those same feelings because I never really got healthy enough. I didn’t have a great game plan for my life, on how I wanted my life to be. I didn’t have great self-talk, I didn’t have great recovery skills … all these things I’ve learned since.”

Petersen, who has a 147–38 all-time record as head coach, has had his name come up for a few major job openings since his departure from Washington, but as of now, he appears content to continue that healing process. He is set to enter his third season removed from the college football sideline in 2022.

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