Road to 1991 Perfection: Nobody Cut Pinkel Any Slack on Husky Stadium Return

The fifth game of the 1991 national championship run brought the University of Washington football team up against Toledo.

On the surface, it was a hopeless mismatch.

Deep down, it was a way-too-soon reunion.

Gary Pinkel and Keith Gilbertson turned up on opposite sidelines that afternoon rather than the same one.

The Husky offensive coordinator from the season before matched wits against his replacement mastermind and it didn't go well for him,

UW 48, Toledo 0.

In the offseason, Pinkel left the UW and returned to his native Ohio to launch his head-coaching career with the Rockets. Now he was back in Husky Stadium with his MAC team being served up as a sacrificial lamb.

A year later, Gilbertson would be put through a similar gauntlet by the Huskies, leaving them for a Pac-10 head-coaching promotion and bringing an undermanned California team to Seattle to get slapped around.

There was never any letting up on the gas. No letting past relationships affect the scoreboard.

"That group of guys was ultra competitive," Gilbertson said of the UW players he and Pinkel coached. "They wanted to beat everybody."

While the roster clearly was deep in football talent, one of the interesting dynamics of the Huskies during this time was the surplus of great coaching minds.

At one point, Don James had two future Husky head coaches on his staff in Jim Lambright and Gilbertson, and another who a lot of people felt should have been hired to lead the show, Pinkel.

Passed over for Rick Neuheisel in 2002 by UW athletic director Barbara Hedges, Pinkel went on to turn Missouri into a national power and hold his own in the SEC.

Pinkel and Gilbertson worked together for two seasons under James, together drawing up offenses that fit the available talent at quarterback and that ran throughout the unit. They were and remain good friends.

When hiring Gilbertson as the Idaho head coach to become a UW assistant, James asked him what sort of title he wanted.

"I just want the chalk," Gilbertson responded.

They talked about what they should call the Huskies' 1991 offense, too. One back? West Coast?

"This is the 'Husky Offense,' " Gilbertson responded, laughing. "This is what we do."

This week, players and coaches from the 1991 team will discuss Gary Pinkel's return to Husky Stadium. Everyone has a little different take on playing one of their own.

In the second video here, Gilbertson reveals how the great Dick Vermeil suggested that the 1991 Huskies throw the ball more.

Gilbertson told him they were prepared to pass the ball on every down if necessary, but they had great fullbacks and tight ends they wanted to utilize.

The Huskies settled on the following approach, according to the man known simply as Gilby, which seemed to work well enough: "Throw the ball to get ahead, run the ball to get it over."

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