Washington Huskies 35 Weber State Wildcats 3: Jonah Coleman puts the team on his back

all right um game just wrapped and um I mean I I that's pretty good right like 35 to3 you beat the spread by a couple of points you look relatively in control of the game the whole time I know it didn't start out the greatest I know that it was a little bit of a rough start in some regards I know that there was definitely some sense that we weren't looking as dominant on the front line as we should have compared to a team like Weber State which is very obviously a team that should be several tiers below us even in a down year like this but there was never any legitimate concern that you were going to lose this game there was never any real concern that you were going to even have a close game you just knew you needed to wait and eventually things would go the right way so um first great stream tonight A lot of people showed up had a good stream going got over 100 people at a couple of points which is good for a um a early season huskys game for sure now I know a part of the reason why that may have been is that a lot of people couldn't watch the game because of the uh Xfinity cont contractual dispute with showing uh games on the Big 10 Network in the Washington area so hopefully that gets resolved but um if you did show up to my stream uh tonight to get play byplay because you couldn't watch the game then I'm going to continue to do this or at least it's my plan to to continue to do this for every huskys game this year but uh great stream tonight had a lot of fun but uh yeah it's a pretty good start to the Jed fish era uh you do see some of the limitations that this team has because the talent levels just dropped off a cliff like we we had pretty much everything that we needed to have last year to be a complete Powerhouse and you you see what happens when those things fade away a little bit you you now have a team where the margins are much thinner you have a team that cannot threaten the ball down the field the way last year's team could so everything just becomes a little bit tighter everything becomes a little bit harder to get through because you're it's it's like the margin of error that you have just goes way down and I will say I think that there is some legitimate criticism that you can Levy against this defensive line there were moments where it looked like they were getting pushed around by Weber State's offensive line and that's something that shouldn't be happening that's something that needs to not be happening I I need those guys to be winning that battle in the trenches every snap or else I'm afraid they're going to get completely bullied by the better schools they play like when we play Michigan later this year are they just going to completely plaster us on the line of scrimmage and we're not going to even have a chance because of that maybe I don't know but overall the game was as advertised the offense looked like the offense that I thought we were going to have Will Rogers much more conservative and much more of a check down throw it short look for the wideopen guy look for the easy throw player than Michael penx pennx was a guy who was not afraid to Loft the ball up into coverage knowing that his super talented receivers would go get it trusting his arm to make really difficult throws so you you see the difference there and it does take away something from your offense when you don't have that threat anymore like a a great example would actually be that um that one play that should have been an interception where um Rogers was trying to fit it in on a third and 10 on like a slant route over the middle just a little bit past the sticks and the safety was able to read it and it was the easiest in the world because you don't have to worry that much about Rogers throwing the ball 60 yards through the air over your head when you're playing up like that I think that play was emblematic of some of the frustration of having a quarterback like Rogers when you contrast it with someone like a Michael penx who we're all used to obviously from these last two years but it that was the offense that we were told we were going to have short intermediate throws scripted throws stuff over the middle there were several throws over the middle today which I mean we didn't see that stuff very much with penx penx didn't use the middle of the field hardly at all so I think that we got what we were told we were going to get uh we got great plays from Boston and Jackson at receiver so even though we lost a ton at that position it doesn't seem like we're going to be completely deficient this year I really liked what I saw from both guys and more important than any of that I got what I wanted to see from the running game tonight because Coleman yeah Coleman looks like he could be like a Workhorse for this team he looks good he's got great balance he's got great power he's got great cutback ability I'm liking what I see from Coleman right now and I'm thinking that he might end up being the horse of this offense and throughout a lot of this season we might even be a run first team because you've also got Davis he had a pretty good game then you've got Muhammad who got in at the end of that game and I thought played pretty well so this may be a run first team and that's cool I'm down with that um also wasn't crazy about the way the offensive line played in this game either I thought that there were several plays where they just completely blew their block and got Will Rogers almost killed uh just complete brain farts on their part so yeah if we try to become a pass first team I wonder if we're going to see a lot of that so I would not mind seeing this team just embrace the ground game as much as possible because that seems to be where the the talent is right now and defensively I mean you only allow three points to Weaver State what else are you going to say right uh their quarterback completed like 10 of 30 passes or something like that it was bad he um couldn't really get anything going he had one good throw the whole game in a meaningful moment everything else after that was like garbage time he hit some throws in garbage time which you know good for him but not really something that I'm personally worried about uh the pressure was pretty good he was uh you know uh Munos pretty pretty escapable pretty good at escaping pressure pretty good at getting away from it so I think he did at least a good job of that even if he can't throw but defensively definitely Bend but don't break I I think the legitimate criticism is the physicality on defense because it felt like especially early Weber State could kind of run all over us and while we did eventually start making plays in the back field we did eventually tighten up a a little bit they still found success this was not one of those games where you look at the line of scrimmage and you're like oh you can tell who has the onear recruits and you can tell who has the five-star recruits no this this was a game where you look at it and you go no there're they are legitimately controlling the line of scrimmage at times and I think that is a something of a concern other than that I thought the cornerbacks played really well made several really good plays on the ball there would have been an interception if not for kind of a fluky play where the safeties ran into each other um there would have been a couple other turnovers probably if not for you know very very slight misses here and there um I like what we're doing in our secondary right now uh mostly happy with the way the linebackers attacked mostly happy with the way we were able to string running plays out especially as the game went on we were able to force plays to the outside and they weren't able to um convert them into anything big for the most part um yeah I I'd say that was a successful first outing this isn't a game where you can really prove anything like I said before I'm not going to sit here and act like this means we're going to accomplish great things this year but there's something to build on here I think that this pass defense should be pretty good I think that this running game should be pretty good and I could see the passing game being adequate I'll put it to you that way um there are too many limitations in this passing game for me to say anything more than that but I think this team can be good enough to to like I said the goal is to make a bowl game and win it this team can do that but um there's going to be tougher competition down the line for sure so thank you to everybody who showed up to this game had fun uh businesslike win I guess some people expected a little bit more but we did beat the spread so th those Vegas guys usually know what's up they they uh know how to make a spread so see you guys later bow down to Washington um yeah one and0 start the season one and0