Washington Football team‘s defense outperforms the ranking of it’s recruits. That’s no accident. That’s the impact of the great defensive coaching of Coach Kwiatkowski
We know the Washington Football team gets more from their recruits then virtually any other team in the Pac-12. It’s the way it’s had to be. The Washington Football team has had to develop raw recruits into the game day dominating squad we expect today. Thanks to Coach Kwiatkowski, that’s just what they’ve done.
A recent article featuring defensive tackle Greg Gaines highlighted that fact:
"“Gaines is a perfect example of how the “OKG” process works for head coach Chris Petersen’s Washington Huskies. 6-foot-2 318 pound Gaines arrived as a three-star recruit for the class of 2014. In that year, the University of Washington recruiting class ranked 38th nationally. The Pac-12 had USC at tenth, Stanford at 13th, UCLA 18th, Oregon 21st, Arizona State 23rd, and Arizona 31st. The national rankings had the Washington Huskies seventh in the Pac-12 conference that year.”"
So the seventh best class in the Pac-12 now sits atop the conference. How did the team become so proficient?
One of the ways is simply getting better coaching. And when Chris Petersen accepted the job to serve as head coach of the Washington Huskies, he wasted no time in reaching out to the defensive strategist who helped propel Petersen into the national spotlight, Pete Kwiatkowski.
Coach K strategy
Wouldn’t you just love to place that Washington Football team into a handy dandy stock category? It would certainly make writing about it much easier. But this is a defense which morphs into the needs of the game, the situation of each game, and the talent of the available players. When you follow a player like defensive tackle Vita Vea in a game, you see him line up over center, between the guard and tackle, and outside of the offensive tackle.
And it’s that versatility of the defense which creates such dynamic mismatches up front. But it also creates mismatches across the field.
The results are impressive
You cannot argue with results. The Washington defense surrenders just 10.8 points per game. That is tops in the Pac-12 and nearly a touchdown and extra point better than second place Utah’s 17.2 points per game. The total yards defense is tops in the Pac-12 as well. At 256.0 yards surrendered, that is nearly 20 yards better than Washington State’s 275.2 yards per game.
And such is the way of the Washington Football team. Players congeal into a formidable team. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Each player is coached to understand that it’s not enough to be a good individual, but to be a great team player. That is how former defensive tackle Elijah Qualls found himself in a two-point stance in the NCAA playoffs last year. He played very well upright in that game.
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Those are the risks Coach Kwiatkowski takes. And more often than not, they pay out in hitting the jackpot. Offense sells tickets, defense wins big games. It’s only a matter of time before a defense coached by Pete Kwiatkowski hoists a trophy.