With Husky Offense, Anything and Everything Goes This Season
To open the second quarter against Tulsa, the University of Washington offense broke from the huddle and into a Chinese fire drill, much like a bunch of frat boys jumping out of a car at a stoplight, running around it like mad men and scrambling to get back inside.
In this case, each Husky lineman moved over a spot to his left in a choreographed fashion, beginning with center Matteo Mele becoming a left guard and others following suit across the line.
Finally, regular left offensive tackle Troy Fautanu set up as a tight end to the right and went in motion back the other way, a highly unusual maneuver for him — or any tackle, for that matter.
UW quarterback Michael Penix Jr. wound up throwing a 7-yard pass to running back Will Nixon, with all of the intrigue coming in the set-up rather than the execution.
Clearly, a perplexed Tulsa defensive unit had not seen this UW play in any of its lead-up film study and probably wanted to let out a collective scream.
These are diabolical times for the Ryan Grubb-designed Husky offense. Deception is nonstop. Trickery is the catch phrase. Pulling opponents' pants down around their ankles in front of everybody else and getting a good laugh is the objective.
"That's the plan, right?" the UW offensive coordinator said of confusing and frustrating the other side. "I think our job, as coaches, is to make sure you find as many ways to manufacture getting the football to your best players, whatever that takes."
Over two games, the Huskies have tried virtually everything. They've run reverses, run the Wildcat, let three different wide receivers run for touchdowns. They've thrown a two-point conversion pass to long snapper Jaden Green, a wide-receiver pass from Jalen McMillan to tight end Jack Westover.
In this day and age of the souped-up UW offense, anything and everything goes heading in to Saturday's game at Michigan State, which is all a little bit ironic considering what the Big Ten once stood for.
With legendary conference coaches in Woody Hayes and Bo Schembechler setting an ultra conservative tone, the Big Ten for the longest time was known as the league of "Three Yards and a Cloud of Dust." Those teams were determined to do things the old-fashioned way, which was take the football, let everyone know how and when you were coming with it and try to ram the thing down someone else's throat.
This season, the Huskies seem bound and determined to try something outlandish every game, to confuse and surprise everyone as much as possible, to empty out the daring side of the playbook. Certainly keeping everything under wraps leading up to Saturday's games is of high priority.
During the season, Kalen DeBoer's staff previously conducted practice in private, free of prying media eyes, but then welcomed the writers and cameramen down the tunnel and onto the field for interviews after wrapping up a day's work.
This week, DeBoer didn't even let the media corps anywhere near the field, making sure everyone did interviews in an old team room, presumably so the reporters and camera crews couldn't see who might be injured, especially in the offense, or who could be working on a new move post-practice.
The Huskies have scored on 14 of 23 drives this season so far, bemoaning the fact they should have had 4-5 more touchdowns if not for overthrown passes or inexplicable drops.
Against the Golden Hurricane, the Huskies twice used the reverse to score on wide-receiver rushes by Jay'Lynn Polk and Odunze from 27 and 14 yards, respectively, showing they were not reluctant to return to the well a second time.
"That's Grubb doing his little rocket science," said fellow wide receiver Jalen McMillan, who picked up his rushing TD in the season opener against Boise State. "You know how he is in the lab. He likes putting us in different positions and I like how he uses us."
The UW currently averages 49.5 points per game, 569 yards of total offense each outing and a national-best 472 yards passing a game.
In all of the team consultations, DeBoer says no play has ever been rejected by him for being to outlandish or risky. It's not a matter of if, rather when, the Huskies will run something.
"No, it's when do we run it, when are we ready?" the DeBoer said. "Ryan and the staff just do an amazing job knowing which ones apply and that the game plan fits the personnel we have and we dial it up at the right time."
Interestingly, Grubb takes no credit for the two-point conversion pass that ended up in the hands of the Husky long snapper after he initially hiked it against Tulsa, instead giving credit to Eric Schmidt, the edge-rusher and special-teams coach, for coming up with it.
Which, when you consider the fact that staffers other than the offensive coordinator are coming up with highly unconventional stuff is downright scary for the opposition to deal with.
"I saw that in practice and said, 'That's pretty good, Schmitty,' " Grubb said.
It's graduate-level stuff, maybe championship material, if not an absolute nightmare for every self-respecting opposing defensive coordinator to stop.
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