Posted by intern Maks Goldenshteyn.
Apparently, even after the school’s most abysmal football season ever, hope springs eternal at Washington — depending on who you ask.
Now eight months on the job as UW head coach, Steve Sarkisian says he’s changed the culture within the team and recharged the buzz surrounding it.
“People are starving to win. They want to be great again,” he said.
And at a Friday news conference, a couple of days before the start of fall camp, Sarkisian reiterated what he’s said all along — that a return to greatness could happen sooner than later.
“I don’t think it’s going take us very long,” he said. “We’re going to become a great football team. If it’s game one, game five, game 12, game 13, two seasons, three seasons, I don’t know when that’s going to occur. I don’t think it’s going to take very long, I know that.”
But asked what Husky fans can expect out of this year’s defense, defensive coordinator Nick Holt said they’ll see players adopting an attitude that reflects the personality of the coaches. Though admittedly, he’s not sure what results that’ll yield.
“God man these guys are having fun out there, flying around. That’s what you can expect from this defense,” Holt said. “Whether we’ll stop anyone I don’t know that yet, but they’ll have fun.”
At the center of Sarkisian’s rebuilding effort is — no surprise here — quarterback Jake Locker.
During a spring coaches tour around the state, Sarkisian said one of the two most popular questions he and his new assistants fielded from fans was: “Is Jake Locker going to be a quarterback, not a running back?” Fans were also interested to know when the team’s weasel-like logo would be changed.
“We’re working on both of those,” Sarkisian assured them.
Before spring practice, Sarkisian said he’d like for Locker to complete 60 percent of his passes this season, though no other UW quarterback has done so since Damon Huard’s 1995 season (63.5 percent).
After showing some gradual improvement through 15 spring practices, Locker went 16-of-18 for 200 yards and two touchdowns in the team’s annual spring game.
“The great thing is, every time we went out to practice, at the end of that day we said, ‘Jake Locker is a better quarterback than he was at the start of the day,’ ” said UW offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Doug Nussmeier.
Having only seen his team on the field for spring camp, which came before a summer of strength and conditioning work, Sarkisian said he’ll be going into fall camp with an open mind when it comes to who starts come Sept. 5 against LSU and who doesn’t.
Incumbent starting tailback Chris Polk figures to be the odds-on favorite to fill the role of feature back, even though Willie Griffin is also listed as a start. Polk made starts against Oregon and Brigham Young before missing the rest of the season after surgery to repair an injured shoulder.
“His weight’s up, he looks solid, he looks like he’s gained some strength,” said Nussmeier. “I think his body’s matured. Obviously (strength coach Ivan Lewis) and those guys in the weight room did a tremendous job. I think he’ll have a big fall camp.”
Among the other three tailbacks on the roster vying for touches is freshman spring camp standout Demetrius Bronson. The team’s top returning wideouts — D’Andre Goodwin, Devin Aguilar and Jermaine Kearse are all listed as starters.
Veteran defensive leaders like defensive end Daniel Te’O-Nesheim, linebackers Mason Foster and E.J. Savannah and safety Nate Williams are likely shoe-in starters for defensive coordinator Nick Holt.
The most wide-open race of all seems to be in the secondary, which returns just two experienced player in sophomore cornerback Quinton Richardson and Nate Williams.
Though in the case of the players returning from last year’s winless team, Holt said experience isn’t necessarily advantageous.
“The 0-12, quite honestly, means they were terrible,” said Holt. “The guys that did play, okay, they’ve been in a Division-I football game, they’ve played in a big stadium, they’ve played in front of 70,000 people, they’ve been booed, they’ve had water thrown on them, they’ve been in the fire. Have they done well? Obviously not. So we need to find the guys that can do well in that atmosphere.”
But for Huskies’ purposes in 2009, last year simply doesn’t matter anymore.
“We don’t talk about last season,” Sarkisian said.