Academically Prowess: Washington Game Preview

In ❌hich, ❌e talk about possible pass defense misinformation.

After a long week of hatin’ the Huskies, it all gets settled on the field tomorrow when the 4th-ranked Oregon Ducks take on the Pups at 4:30 PM on Montlake.

My typical game previews end up jumping all around the field and are full of scattershot conclusions about every little aspect of the game.

But this week, I want to keep it simple and make one single argument about one particular “key” to the game, and then just leave you with that as my takeaway for tomorrow.

Maybe that will feel like an incomplete preview, but you’ve all seen eight games out of these Ducks so far, and at least a few middling minutes of this year’s Husky squad, so we’ll keep this tight and focused and valuable.

So here’s my big theory:

People are saying that Washington has a bad rush defense, but that they have a really good pass defense, and I’m here to ask the question: What if Washington just has a bad everything defense?

Other than, “this is a rivalry game, anything can happen,” the consensus analyst line surrounding this game seems to be that Washington just has an out-of-this-world pass defense, and that Oregon will be forced to run the ball.

First of all, nobody forces Mario Cristobal to do anything (they certainly don’t have to force him to run the damn ball), and second of all, there are a couple of glaring statistical anomalies on the Huskies’ schedule that make their “least passing yards allowed in the country” stat extremely suspect.

Statistically, the Huskies have one of the nation’s top passing defenses. But those great stats seem to be insanely weighted by two losses where they battled run-heavy teams like Michigan and Oregon State who only managed to throw for 44 and 48 yards, respectively.

But let’s dive into those two games because, if you hold an offense to sub-50 in either category, why didn’t you win?

Michigan passed the ball a mere 15 times, and ran it 55 times for 343 yards. Oregon State and Chance Nolan also passed just 15 times on the Huskies, opting instead to attempt 48 rushes for 242.

Heck, throw in Washington’s UCLA loss too, where Chip himself realized that he could totally pass on these guys.

DTR completed 21 of 26 for 183 yards and 2 TDs. Even with that success through the air, the Bruins still leaned on the run by taking to the ground 37 times for 237 yards.

Maybe you see where I’m going with this, but it’s starting to feel like Washington’s “strong pass defense” is merely a symptom of the fact that good teams are just realizing that the run game is right there in front of them and that they’d be stupid not to take the easy yards.

Now, Oregon is a run-first team, so even if Washington was going to play with absolute clamps in their passing defense, I have no doubt in my mind that this peaking Duck offensive line could help lead Travis Dye and Byron Cardwell (and AB) to find at least 250 yards on the ground when it’s all said and done.

But we know that AB is playing his best ball of the season, and JoMo is getting so comfortable in the passing play calls that I’d be shocked if Devon Williams & Co. didn’t end up with a couple of big downfield plays, along with just a generally successful day through the air all around.

So, if you hear anyone telling you that the Ducks simply MUST run the ball in order to win and that the Husky secondary is basically Fort Knox, you should 1) pay them for the pizza, and 2) wholeheartedly reject their premise.

I’ll say that the Husky pass defense is far more like US Capitol Building. It’s probably way easier to break through than you’d think, it’s just that nobody has ever given it a real test.

Until now.

34-20, good guys.

Go Ducks.