Washington football questions: 1. How good will Lake’s club be in his first year?
While an eight-win season is not necessarily a bad year, it’s probably considered so by Washington football standards. That’s the level of success that Petersen made commonplace throughout his tenure in Seattle. So now that Lake takes over, a coach essentially hand-picked by his predecessor, he’ll be expected to continue succeeding at that level.
The question then becomes what year one will look like for Washington under Lake and that’s tough to say. As we’ve covered extensively, this offense has some major question marks that we won’t fully know the answer to until the season kicks off. But the Huskies will need to have things in line right away given their 2020 schedule.
Washington opens the season against Michigan, a team who could be a top-10 lock all year. They also have games at Oregon and at Utah in October and then drew USC on the road as well. And for good measure, they’ll end the 2020 season in Pullman, playing in Lake’s first Apple Cup game on the road. That’s far from an easy slate for any team.
As is often the case, the Pac-12 as a whole seems incredibly volatile and, if Lake can get his team working together quickly this season, they have the requisite talent to compete at the top of the conference. But we’ll see if this inexperienced offense can find their footing early because, if not, another 8-5 season or worse might be in the cards.
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