Second-guessing UW’s Chris Petersen seems silly in hindsight

A .22 caliber coach in a .357 Magnum conference?

I asked whether that was the case with Chris Petersen two years ago. Actually, it wasn’t so much a question as an accusation. Washington had just blown a game to 17th-ranked Arizona, and I wondered if Petersen had the coaching chops for the Pac-12. I also may have compared his debut season with the Huskies to wearing a thong made of barbed wire.

I thought he’d mismanaged the clock on the road during a season in which his team – which included four of the first 44 players drafted into the NFL the following spring – didn’t win a single game it wasn’t expected to win. The Huskies were 0-5 against ranked opponents, and no loss was more maddening than the one in Arizona when it appeared that Washington’s victory was a mathematical certainty only to have Petersen call a running play with about a minute and a half remaining, resulting in a fumble.

No. 9 Washington faces Pac-12 test in Arizona

I found myself wondering if Petersen was like the other coaches who excelled at Boise State and then graduated into mediocrity in a bigger conference. Think Dirk Koetter after he went to Arizona State. Or Dan Hawkins at Colorado.

But as Washington prepares to open Pac-12 play in Petersen’s third season at the site of the spot where the coach was most scrutinized, I need to make an admission:

I was wro

I was wrrrrrooooo

I was a bit rash, largely off-base and pretty much completely wrong in two totally different ways.

First, Petersen didn’t mismanage the clock two years ago in Arizona like I thought he did. I learned that because I’m currently reading – nerd alert – the updated version of “The Complete Handbook of Clock Management.”

Second, Petersen is a better coach than the Huskies deserved to hire. That’s become clear after his assembly of this steel-toed defense while also nursing along an offense whose very best players are only in their second year on campus.

This is a coach whose team plays at a pitch that resonates with the style of play that Washington has been so proud of: an unflinching defense, an efficient and occasionally spectacular offense with absolutely extraordinary play on special teams.

I’ve never been so very happy to be so very wrong, because two years ago I was incredulous. Petersen had a defense stocked with NFL talent. Four players from that squad were chosen in the first two rounds of the next year’s draft. Well, three if you don’t include cornerback Marcus Peters, who was booted off the team.

And with all that talent, the Huskies couldn’t pull off a single upset. Instead, Petersen called for a fake punt on fourth down in a tie game against Stanford that predictably failed. That came one week after the Huskies had the ball and the lead in Arizona only to cough up the game.

In retrospect, the fake punt was still dumb. The clock management in Arizona, though? Well, that’s worth revisiting.

Washington had the ball, leading by two points with 1:33 left in the game, having just gained a first down. The Wildcats held one timeout. With a 40-second play clock, all the Huskies had to do was take three knees and the clock would be all but expired, right?

That’s what plenty of people thought. Well, let’s be more specific: that’s what I thought. At least I did up until about a month ago when I started reading the book considered to be the definitive guide on clock management in football, which is titled – creatively enough – “The Complete Handbook of Clock Management.”

The book was written by Homer Smith, an incredibly smart man who was inextricably drawn to football. He played at Princeton, where he received his undergraduate degree. He also earned an MBA from Stanford and then a degree in theological studies (?) from Harvard. He coached football for 39 years, 37 of them in college, where he worked everywhere from Alabama to Arizona to UCLA. Actually, he was with the Bruins three times.

He is widely considered one of the best teachers of any football coach ever, and his guide on clock management is considered core curriculum for coaches from the high-school level all the way up to the NFL. In fact, the book is so ubiquitous that a 2016 revised edition was just released, five years after Smith passed away at the age of 79.

On page 20, Smith spells out that a coach trying to burn time off the clock should always anticipate a little less being taken off than the maximum. Actually, he states even more bluntly that a coach should never anticipate being able to exhaust more than 40 seconds per play with a running clock.

Apply that to Washington’s situation two years ago in Arizona. The Huskies had the ball with a two-point lead and 93 seconds left on the clock. Remember, the Wildcats had a timeout. The Huskies couldn’t have been sure on first down that they’d be able to exhaust the clock before a fourth-down snap was required. Not with Arizona still holding a timeout.

Washington called for a handoff on first down, and Deontae Cooper fumbled for the first time in his Husky career. It was unfortunate. It was also unfair to blame the coach.

Petersen was being prudent. Perhaps a bit conservative, but prudent. He was following his guidelines, and two years after questioning both his clock management and his capacity as Washington’s coach, I’m thrilled to say that I was unequivocally wrong on both counts.

Follow @dannyoneil