BROCK AND SALK

Chris Petersen on Huskies’ strength on D, need for progess on offense

Aug 27, 2016, 4:04 PM | Updated: 4:05 pm

The Huskies will host College Gameday and a surging USC team in Seattle on Nov. 12. (AP)...

The Huskies will host College Gameday and a surging USC team in Seattle on Nov. 12. (AP)

(AP)

LISTEN: Huskies football coach Chris Petersen on UW's progress in fall camp

If the No. 14-ranked Washington Huskies are going to live up to the lofty hype they enter the 2016 season with, it’s clear that a big jump on offense from last season is going to be important. And the reason why pressure is on players like quarterback Jake Browning, running back Myles Gaskin and wide receiver John Ross is because of the potential the defense has.

UW’s D was its biggest strength in Chris Petersen’s first two years as Huskies head coach, and all signs point to that being the same in Year 3, which starts next Saturday at home against Rutgers.

When Petersen was asked Friday on “Brock and Salk” what he expects to be his team’s biggest strengths, it was pretty telling that he went through each position group of the defense before addressing the offense. Even more telling was what he said about the offense: “We can talk ’til we’re blue in the face, we just need to score more points.”

Huard: Five takeaways on No. 14-ranked Huskies

Luckily for the Huskies, it appears they won’t have to score too many points to come away with wins thanks to what the defense is capable of. In 2015, Washington led the Pac-12 and was 13th in the country in scoring defense by allowing an average of just 18.8 points per game. The Dawgs were also ranked 31st in the nation in total defense, allowing just 351.8 yards per game. A good chunk of that D is back, especially in the secondary, and there isn’t much drop-off – if any – at the spots where there has been turnover.

“Our secondary, we have some guys that have played significant reps and we also have some depth there that are pushing and having other guys compete for playing time, so I think that’s an interesting group,” Petersen said. “Even at the linebacker position we have Azeem Victor and Keishawn Bierria who played a lot, but we’ve got some young guys behind them who I think are good players too who I’m interested to see play.”

The one area Petersen has some reservations is on the defensive line, which won’t have pass-rushing linebackers Travis Feeney (drafted by the Pittsburgh Steelers) and Cory Littleton (on the L.A. Rams’ roster) helping to put pressure on quarterbacks.

“I think our D-line is interesting because they’re different than last year. I think they’re pretty strong and stout, but I still go back to Travis Feeney and Cory Littleton that were really two dynamic guys off the edge. We’re gonna have to figure out how to get that done without those guys,” Petersen said.

Here’s some more highlights from Petersen’s interview:

John Ross: Still fast. After missing all of last season following knee surgery in January 2015, speedy wideout Ross is back with the Huskies, and he looks healthy and ready to be the deep threat Browning didn’t have in his first year as UW’s QB. When Petersen was asked if Ross was the fastest player he’s ever coached, he shared that the Huskies have been using a GPS system to measure things on the practice field and that it has proven just how quick Ross is. “John Ross the other day ran the fastest he’s ever run here; it was 20-some mph for about 70 yards. He got a ball and took it. Since we’ve been wearing those things, nobody’s run that fast, and it was impressive,” Petersen said. “He’s the most explosive guy (I’ve ever coached), and he probably is the fastest, as well. He can just go. He’s not the jitterbug type, he just can pounce from zero to whatever it is super fast.”

Time to beat up on somebody else. Petersen has been pretty proactive in trying to quell the preseason media hype around his team, which is understandable considering the Huskies barely qualified for a bowl last year and finished 7-6 on the season. So it came as no surprise that he continued to shy away from the high expectations. “We need to go out and earn this stuff,” he said. As far as that goes, he’s definitely eager for Washington to finally get the chance to do just that next weekend. “I think that (the Husky players) have worked hard, that they want to be good, that we’ve got some players with some pretty good experience, and it’s time to go against somebody else. I think we’ve got a little bit of that big-brother syndrome going on where you know everybody’s strengths and certainly their weaknesses, and then both sides play to each other’s weaknesses to try to get them, and it’s like we need to see a different defense, we need to see different guys lined up in front of us to see what we really have.”

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Chris Petersen on Huskies’ strength on D, need for progess on offense