Washington Huskies Football: Three reasons why Chris Petersen will be an upgrade as Head Coach
With any coaching change there is always a reason for concern about how the team is going to perform on the field. For the University of Washington football program and its fans there three key reasons why Chris Petersen will be an upgrade over Steve Sarkisian.
Reason #1 The focus on in-state recruiting by the Petersen staff will be much stronger than the Sarkisian regime
Within a short amount of time after being hired this new staff found a way to land two top prospects in the state of Washington in defensive back Budda Baker and offensive lineman Kaleb McGary in the first recruiting class.
One of the problems under Sarkisian was the perceived lack of focus on keeping top Washington players at home. For the most part except for Austin Seferian-Jenkins, Kasen Williams, and Bishop Sankey the previous staff did not do a good enough job at all of keeping top players at home.
Reason #2 The focus will kept on the football field versus appeasing the local Seattle media
The thing that always appealed to me about Don James back in the day was his ability to keep the focus on football. Fast forward to now with Chris Petersen and you are going to see the same focus on football. Petersen has been fine when he has met with the media in Seattle.
The end goal is to win football games which is what Petersen is one of the best in the business at doing. While Sarkisian was way too focused on winning the press conference and appeasing the Seattle media.
Reason #3 This team will be much more resilient after tough losses
After the loss to Stanford last season it took the Huskies way too long to snap out of the funk they went into after that particular loss. There will be adverse situations for Chris Petersen and his staff to deal with this season with rebounding from a loss.
What is going to separate Petersen from Sarkisian is the overall ability of his staff to keep the players on point and prepared on a weekly basis to be at their best.