Washington Huskies Football: Chris Petersen ranked as the Second Best Coach in the Nation

Tis the season of endless amounts of preseason lists as now NFL.com has joined the mix with the release of top 14 coaches in College Football heading into the 2014 season as part of  its 14 for ’14 series.Washington head coach Chris Petersen was ranked number two on this list just behind Nick Saban of Alabama.

The reasons they state for ranking Petersen so high are pretty straight forward. First, the 88 percent winning percentage at Boise State. It does not matter what level of football it takes a great deal of focus and consistency to get players motivated on a weekly basis and Petersen along with his staff just about perfected that while at Boise.

Next, they talk about his ability to exploit mismatches on offense. How true is that just look at the Fiesta Bowl performance against Oklahoma. The Sooners never really found an answer for what the Broncos did in that game even though Oklahoma had superior physical talent. This point also applies to their performances in wins over Virginia Tech in a virtual road game and against SEC teams like Georgia in the Georgia Dome.

Another underrated stat is the amount of players that Boise State has had drafted into the NFL within the past five years. The Broncos had 14 players drafted in the last five years which places them right there with just about anyone in college football. That type of success in sending guys on to the NFL is a testament to Petersen and his staff to coach players up  ans develop them.

This list overall is a very interesting one as it illustrates very well the strength of the Pac-12 Conference from a coaching perspective as David Shaw of Stanford was ranked number four and Mike Riley came in at number 14.  These are fair ratings for a list like this as both Shaw and Riley do a nice job like Petersen of maximizing their available personnel and giving their teams a chance to succeed on an annual basis.

Overall, while lists like these have a subjective nature too them it does reiterate the fact of just how important it was for Scott Woodward to go out and get Petersen to come here. The ability to get him to leave Boise and spend whatever it took sends a message to Husky football fans that money will be no object in getting this program back among the best in college football.