UDUBNation.com - Dawgs didn't have to be perfect

September 28, 2012

Justin Rowland
UDUBNation.com Publisher

Washington didn't have to be perfect to pull off their biggest win since the 2009 season.

While the Huskies did a lot of things well last night, perhaps the most promising sign is that Washington won in spite of struggling to give their quarterback any time in the pocket. In their battle against one of the nation's top defensive front sevens, they clearly had a tough time.

The Stanford front seven routinely got into the backfield and chased Keith Price all game. Washington likes to utilize the screen and short pass, but that was a necessity last night. There was no such thing as sitting back in the pocket and picking the defense apart, because the pocket routinely collapsed from seemingly out of nowhere.

Nobody expected the offensive line to give Price five seconds to survey the field and go through his progressions. And that didn't happen.

But what Washington did do was capitalize when they had to. Stanford didn't, with some untimely drops.

If the Huskies can even marginally improve their offensive line play then you could have a team that ends up in a pretty quality bowl game, because the skill position players stepped up when they needed to.

There was a lot of good to take away from the game last night. For starters, the defense turned in one of it's best performances in many years. And Sarkisian pointed to many of those positives after the game.

"We didn't have holdings, we didn't have false starts, we didn't line up wrong, we protected the football for the most part until their great play by their kid 93," he said.

"We covered our kicks, we punted the ball, we tackled really well and at the end of the day we had a chance to win in the fourth quarter and converted on a couple of really critical fourth down plays that ultimately changed the momentum of the game. I thought our crowd was awesome, especially in the second half and it is a good win against a good football team."

But maybe the most promising sign is that we may still not have seen the best this Husky team can play.

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