Breaking Down the Current UW Football Roster With What Lake Left

His ill-fated stint as the Husky leader has resulted in just 17 players for the new staff.

As the Atlanta Falcons new defensive coordinator, Jimmy Lake is right where he should be in the coaching world. Sharing his defensive knowledge. Instilling toughness in his NFL players.

As the University of Washington football coach, however, he wasn't cut out for the job, not as an administrative type who had to be big on details, and he got fired after two abbreviated seasons in charge.

Lake, who replaced Chris Petersen at the end of the 2019 season, remains one of four coaches who signed players that fill up the current Husky roster, preceding Kalen DeBoer and the newly hired Jedd Fisch.

To have the fingerprints of four head coaches all over one college football team is exceedingly rare, with the turnover usually meaning repeated failure, but it hasn't been a death wish either, with the Huskies winning three bowl games — the Las Vegas, Alamo and Sugar — before and after a 4-8 downturn under Lake's leadership in 2021.

This is the second of four stories examining the manpower brought in by the quartet of recent coaches to Montlake, currently 99 players in all. While just five remain from Petersen's UW tour of duty, 17 players who signed with Lake, including 11 on scholarship, are still suiting up, using a locker space and going to weight workouts and/or practices for the Huskies.

Jimmy Lake has 17 of the players he signed still on the UW roster :: Joe Nicholson/USA TODAY Sports

Just one Lake player returns for the coming season as a full-fledged starter in cornerback Elijah Jackson, a 6-foot-1, 191-pound junior who opened all 15 games during the Huskies' run to the CFP national championship game, and 17 overall in his career. Jackson forever will be known for swatting away an end-zone pass on the final play of the Sugar Bowl to preserve a 37-31 victory over Texas in New Orleans.

Six other players have been part-time starters in senior linebacker Carson Bruener, senior wide receiver Giles Jackson, senior tight end Quentin Moore, senior defensive lineman Voi Tunuufi, junior safety Makell Esteen and junior cornerback Davon Banks,

The 6-foot-2, 226-pound Bruener has six starts on his ledger, five coming in 2021, and some people have wondered why it hasn't been a lot more. He's been a 2023 All-Pac-12 honorable-mention selection and a 2021 Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Week recipient following his first UW career start at Stanford. He has piled up 202 career tackles, a total that includes three very physical games of 14 to 16 tackles, plus he came up with a 33-yard interception return.

Carson Bruener went 33 yards with this interception return against Boise State in 2023 / Skylar Lin Visuals

Giles Jackson, who spent his first two seasons at Michigan, certainly never envisioned he'd be playing as many as four more years at the UW for three different coaches. He has 13 starts in his long-winding career, including nine for the Huskies. At the two schools, he has 74 catches for 830 yards and 3 touchdowns. As a guy with 95- and 97-yard kickoff returns for scores in the Big Ten, the Huskies would be best advised to get him out in the open field once and for all.

Moore brings four starts and could be the TE starter this coming season. Tunuufi, Esteen and Banks each have two starting assignments in their Husky careers, with Esteen considered a full-time starting candidate for the coming season. 

Scholarship players with no UW starting experience but who have pulled a lot of game-day snaps include junior edge rusher Maurice Heims, junior nickelback Dyson McCutcheon, junior running back Sam Adams II and junior offensive guard Gaard Memmelaar, with the latter recovering from a knee injury that forced him to miss all of the 2023 season.

On Lake's watch, non-scholarship punter Jack McCallister joined the Huskies and since has become a two-year starter who has appeared in 28 games on fourth down while still waiting on financial assistance. Fellow walk-ons in junior wide receiver Cam Sirmon, junior defensive tackle Bradley McGannon and junior edge rusher Milton Hopkins Jr., were Lake-era roster adds and each have played in five to 11 games in their careers. Walk-on quarterback Teddy Purcell and edge rusher Jake Jennings, both juniors, haven't got on the field on Saturdays.

Seventeen UW players, both scholarship and non-scholarship, isn't a lot to show from Jimmy Lake, who made his coaching exit 28 months ago. Which is exactly why he is making decisions as an NFL defensive coordinator and no longer looking at the Husky big picture.

  

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