Washington's pro-style program
The Huskies have been on a great run since hiring Steve Sarkisian back in 2009 to bring his pro-style offense and have continued in that vein since with the recent hire of Jedd Fisch.
The Washington Huskies have been consistently “pro-style” in football tactics for a very long time now. It’s something they seem to be intentionally aiming at given their hires over the last several decades. Not just pro-style coaches either, but pro-style offensive coaches.
Certainly dating back to Rick Neuheisel’s tenure from 1999-2002, the Huskies have routinely targeted head coaches with an offensive background and a pro-style system on that side of the ball.
Chris Petersen came from Boise State but his system included dropback passing and was heavy on under center formations and play-action passing. His predecessor was Steve Sarkisian and successor was Kalen DeBoer. Basically a who’s who of modern, pro-style offensive minds in the college game.
Next up is Jedd Fisch, who made his big arrival on the scene in college football with Jim Harbaugh back at Michigan.
It’s easy to see why they’ve maintained this approach to bringing in new head coaches. These pro-style offensive coaches also often like to pursue pro-style tactics on defense as well and their approach on offense tends to be useful in building good defenses. The strategy of aiming to score as many points as quickly as possible doesn’t fly in the pro ranks and pro-style offensive coaches tend to have a mind to protect their defense and control the flow of the game more carefully. They also tend to rely on precision play-calls to deal damage rather than simplicity+tempo successfully discombobulating the defense and turning a simple concept into an explosive play.
Of course this could lead to less margin for error and defeat, but Washington seems to get pretty good guys. Today we’re going to talk about Jedd Fisch and their project with the former Arizona head man. I’ve already noted that Fisch’s first big move upon the hire was to secure Steve Belichick as his defensive coordinator. Is Steve a good coach? I dunno. Probably. At any rate, you can see that the emphasis on defense is there.
Today we’re going to talk about their prospects for carrying on DeBoer’s success in 2024.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to America's War Game to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.