UW Excluded from List of Contenders — What Does It Have to Do?
The University of Washington football team finished eighth-ranked in the final Associated Press poll. The Huskies have been slotted as high as fourth in the preseason prognostications so far.
Yet there's still the occasional pushback in which Kalen DeBoer's trumpeted second Montlake squad gets totally shut out of the championship thought process.
This week, 247 Sports picked out nine contenders. The Huskies weren't one of them.
Of course, SEC and Big Ten teams are going to get in the way— and five of them do — because they're from college football's high-rent district with plenty of championships and TV money to show for it, and the UW is on a waiting list to get into the country club.
So what's it going to take for DeBoer's on-the-cusp-of-greatness Huskies to drive a consensus opinion that they belong in all of the title conversations?
It's actually fairly cut and dried — the UW has to show it can play high-level defense. Last fall, it did just enough to get by and keep games close. This football season, the guys in purple need to show they can attack, force the issue and collect turnovers like they did big yardage totals and passels of touchdowns.
They certainly have the edge rushers to get things done in the coming season and the linebackers look overly promising. The Huskies also have six new cornerbacks to go with a handful of holdovers, so there should be an upgrade there.
However, can the Inge/Morrell defense get enough of a push up front and offer a total lockdown secondary? Can it dominate along the lines of the UW offense, which no one, repeat no one, could top in 2022?
Among its nine chosen ones, 247 Sports lists, in this order, Georgia (15-0 in 2022), Michigan (13-1), Ohio State (11-2), Clemson (11-3), Alabama (11-2), LSU (10-4), Texas (8-5), USC (10-3) and Florida State (10-3).
Performance, tradition reputation and proper marketing all play factors in selling these programs. The analysts see the NFL talent, the accredited quarterbacks and the sack monsters. What they don't factor into the equation is the coaching involved.
By all accounts, DeBoer's staff appears to be one on the rise when compared to others. Spring football offered up yet more evidence of its attention to detail and a grading system that appears to be well designed.
Texas, of course, is a questionable contender, living more off its past reputation, and those five-loss Longhorns lost 27-20 to Washington in the Alamo Bowl last December.
Granted, Texas didn't have the services of superlative NFL-bound running back Bijan Robinson in San Antonio, but DeBoer and Company unmistakably won this game with coaching. They had the Huskies much better prepared from the opening kickoff then former UW coach Steve Sarkisian did the Longhorns.
Maybe all the Huskies need is time to further prove themselves, to show they're capable of figuring things out, to be included in every contender list.
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