Road to 1991 Perfection: Fraley's Crushing Cal Hit Brought Out Lambo's Wry Side

During their national championship run, the Huskies had to go great lengths to meet the standards set, as the inside linebacker learned in Berkeley.

In a perfect season, Chico Fraley remembers the perfect hit.

And this swift and talented inside linebacker had a lot to choose from in 1991.

His University of Washington football team was playing California in Berkeley in week 6.

It was hot out.

The stadium was overflowing.

National TV game.

The Huskies were third-ranked in the country, trailing only Florida State and Miami in the national polls obviously stacked in favor of the Sunshine State, and playing the nation's No. 7 team.

This was big stuff. 

On third-and-short, Fraley came up and met the Cal fullback.

Flat-backed him.

That's how Fraley put it.

Which meant the guy went backward. Went down hard. Probably lucky he got up.

"I crushed the fullback," Fraley said. "It was a picture-perfect hit."

Now on a blow like that, the collision is so precise the instigator doesn't feel a thing while the victim feels everything. 

The only downside on this play was the Bears player got the yard he needed for the first down before he took the Fraley punishment.

This is another in series of vignettes about the UW 1991 national championship football team, filling in the conversation before the pandemic-delayed season begins next month.

Fraley later encountered defensive coordinator Jim Lambright, expecting an attaboy for his ferocious play.

An acknowledgement.

Anything at all.

Lambright, a master motivator, instead mentioned to Fraley how if he'd got off his block a little faster the first down never would have happened.

He was being funny.

Lambright was being wry.

"It was tongue in cheek," the linebacker said.

Or, in a Husky season where nothing less than absolute perfection was required, was it?

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