DeBoer Lays Out Significance of Beating Michigan State
Everyone was watching. A national TV audience. Husky Stadium finally full of fans. Recruits coming in from far and wide.
For one Saturday night at least, they saw Kalen DeBoer's University of Washington football team wipe away every last bitter memory from last season by embarrassing 11th-ranked Michigan State by 25 points before settling for an extra-satisfying 39-28 victory.
Everyone watched as these once-dismissed and now 3-0 Huskies showed they could compete with anyone again. Stand in there and trade punches. Put DeBoer solidly on the map as a Power 5 coach.
Maybe the Big Ten invited the wrong Pac-12 teams to join them. Maybe this elitist conference from Columbus to Ann Arbor did itself a big favor by not having to contend on a regular basis with a Midwest-produced offensive mastermind who has a system that works wherever he goes and is bound to shake up the ranks.
What happened on the 52nd anniversary weekend of the unveiling of Sonny Sixkiller was the full coming-out party for Kalen DeBoer.
He knew the outcome was big, too.
"We just beat a really good football team in my mind," DeBoer said. "To get this win now is going to continue to put the belief in our guys."
Not only have the Huskies been unbeatable in three games, they've been enormously entertaining. Just as Sixkiller's show-stopping and must-see football crew was during the age of Aquarius and the Vietnam war. An alternative to hard times.
"It's only every day going to get better for us as we got work in practice," DeBoer said. "I just think the things we've addressed every week after a game, where we came up short or weren't as good on Saturday, we've improved in those areas. We've become more of a well-rounded team."
This three-game Husky coach listed the improvements made against Michigan State: the Huskies were more adept at stopping the run, they tackled better, special teams showed improvement and these guys responded every time the Spartans made a move.
The idea all along was if this DeBoer could beat the Spartans in just his third Saturday on the job, this would set the city on fire when it comes to college football again. That, and beat Oregon in two months.
Well, let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. Seattle doesn't seem whole unless Husky football is in a good place, and last year's debacle was piling on following the pandemic.
This team hasn't faced much adversity yet, and it will. But for one Saturday night, against some of the best the Big Ten can offer, DeBoer and his football team won over a national audience, turned highly competitive again and gave Seattle something to celebrate again.
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