Except in the rain, and it never rains in Seattle.Boating into work each day is the way to go.
Chris Petersen gone from Washington
- Thread starter ChiTownLion
- Start date
You can make the case he was the best active coach in America who was not named Saban.
Eh, I'd definitely place him behind Dabo, Smart, etc.
Petersen is/was a great coach -- a fantastic offensive mind, and a very solid tactician. But he's never had a recruiting class better than #15, and has had several outside of the top-20 (most of them, actually). That's a big part of the game, and at the end of the day, UW generally outperformed their talent level.......but not by a whole lot. Particularly when you consider how they got handled in their NY6 games and couldn't get over the hump and beat legit non-Pac 12 teams.
Those UW teams, if given a Big Ten or SEC schedule, would be a typical 8-4 type of team ala Iowa. Nothing to be ashamed of, but hardly a national contender.
If you said "one of the best tacticians", I would agree. But overall coach? I'd gladly take Franklin for a program in a big boy conference like the Big Ten.
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I like Franklin a lot. But let's step back for a second and imagine Petersen here. Maybe he gets a few stars less per recruiting class than Franklin because Franklin is a really charismatic guy, but I'm going to guess Petersen gets better overall recruits then he does at Washington just because of where Penn State is both geographically and on the national stage. We've seen him do more with much less, so I think he'd do about as well as Franklin. I think you really undersell how good Petersen is. As for how they got handled: we beat them 35-28 and Ohio State beat them 28-23. The other loss was to Alabama in the CFP. Given how much the relative talent favored the other teams, that isn't too bad.
Wasn't Peterson Penn State's first choice after they "retired" Joe "three weeks early"?
I thought they made a first overture, and they even tried a second attempt.
I have always liked how the guy has handled himself.
I thought they made a first overture, and they even tried a second attempt.
I have always liked how the guy has handled himself.
Quite possible, but I could understand having interest in him. Again, I think he comports himself very well, and, he wins.
No doubt he's a really good coach. The best out West, IMO.
But UW was certainly aided by (1) the fall of Oregon, (2) a decline at Stanford, and (3) a carnival at USC. During his prime years (2016 to 2018), he only played 2 conference games against teams that would finish in the top-10. He lost one (2016 at home against USC), and won the other (@ Washington State in 2018).
And in his NY6 games, aside from the 24-7 loss to Alabama, they got down by margins of 28-7 and 28-3 against Penn State and Ohio State respectively, before they eventually made the games respectable.
Their only notable non-conference game during that stretch was last year in which they lost to Auburn (who finished 7-5).
His last few recruiting classes are much better (in the #15 range), but one should note that it coincided with the complete collapse of USC's recruiting -- and Petersen got a bunch of California kids that ordinarily would go to USC or UCLA.
What he did at Boise State speaks for itself. The guy can flat out coach. But my only point is that circumstances were very favorable to him out West at that particular moment in time, and if he faced the same challenges (schedule, recruiting rivals, etc.) as coaches in the Big Ten or SEC, it's unlikely that he has the same level of success.
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