UW Coach Comparison: Huskies Have Richardson in Their Corner

Let go by WSU, the secondary leader got his career back on track at Arizona.

John Richardson chats up quarterback Demond Williams Jr. during stretching. / Skylar Lin Visuals

Jimmy Lake set the bar fairly high when he served as University of Washington defensive backs coach. With his position knowledge and aggressive style, Lake developed cornerback after cornerback bound for the NFL, ultimately taking credit for Trent McDuffie and Kyler Gordon, who he recruited and become first-team All-Pac-12 corners in 2021 and first- and second-round draft picks even after playing for a bad 4-8 team.

Following the Huskies' head-coaching change post Lake -- from Kalen DeBoer to Jedd Fisch -- we look closely at each of the 10 new assistants who have arrived in Montlake to see what the differences are, whether they're an upgrade or status quo from the previous coaches they replaced. After all, DeBoer's guys won 25 of 28 games over the past two seasons, so they were doing something right.

The Husky cornerbacks coach changed hands from Julius "Juice" Brown to John Richardson, two guys who have shared similar career paths, in terms of experience levels, ups and downs and even their football roots.

Both were college cornerbacks, Richardson for North Dakota State and Brown for Boise State.

Both are California natives, with Richardson emerging from Stockton and Brown coming from Compton.

Both have roughly a dozen years of college coaching experience taking them many places. Richardson previously coached at Arizona, WSU, Wyoming and North Dakota State, and Brown made other stops at Fresno State, Utah State, Boise State, Arkansas State and Troy, and he's back at Texas Tech for a second stint.

What's different is Richardson finds himself two schools removed from WSU, where he had a career setback -- fired with Cougars coach Nick Rolovich and two others on staff for refusing as state employees to get vaccinated as mandated during the COVID pandemic -- and he's on a coaching upswing again.

However, Brown saw his reputation fall off some at the UW, to the point he was the only DeBoer coach not to get a pay raise following the 2022 debut season, with his cornerbacks struggling throughout an overall highly productive Husky season.

More telling is the best Brown could do once DeBoer's UW staff broke up is to take an analyst job at Texas Tech, a place where he had been a full-time cornerbacks coach just four years earlier. And this came after he coached Jabbar Muhammad and ElijahJackson, a pair of 15-game starters for a 14-1 team, to a fair amount of individual success, with Muhammad named as an All-Pac-12 second-team selection.

On the other hand, Richardson coached three Arizona corners in 2023 in Ephesians Prysock, Tacario Davis and Treydan Stukes who each received All-Pac-12 honorable-mention honors, and he now has Prysock playing opposite Jackson for him at the UW. He appears to be a Husky coaching upgrade.

For the latest UW football and basketball news, go to si.com/college/washington