UW head coach Chris Petersen spoke with the media for roughly eight minutes after practice on Tuesday. Below is the complete transcription:
On choosing to go inside for practice on Tuesday for extra procession – Not extra. It’s the air quality. Says be inside so trainers monitor that every day. So it’s time to go inside.
On the season-opener also being an indoor stadium also being a benefit – Yeah, no doubt. It doesn’t bother us at all. That’s the beauty of indoor. Use it for different reasons. Sometimes you won’t play in weather and sometimes we’re going to play inside, you got to get out of smoke. There’s all kind of – a lot of different reasons we could be inside there. So we’re bless to have that.
On how much impact the smoke has had on practice – Zero. Not at all. No it hasn’t. Today is I think the first day we, I kind of smelt it. You could see it, but this does, you can smell it a little bit here so it’s awesome to have that and go inside. But it hasn’t, we haven’t missed a beat with it.
On monitoring the air quality – It’s pretty easy. Whatever time we’re going to practice, hour before if it’s close trainers just monitor it and say we’re inside or we’re outside.
On today being the only day inside – Only day. Only day. Yeah.
On the transition between install mode and game mode – Yeah we’re getting close. But we’re still install. We had a bunch of stuff in there today. Had a good spirited practice. Guys did a good job.
On what showed up from the Saturday scrimmage tape – Yeah I think a lot of things show up. I think the tackling thing is probably the biggest thing that always shows up. I think tackling shows up always in first games, first and second games. As much as you practice it in close quarters, as much as you try to wrap up in practice when it’s really going live nobody gets enough live reps to be really great tacklers out of the gate. So I think that showed up. Something we really got to work on.
On playing in space and seeing that more Saturday – Well I think that’s the game. That’s college football. That’s what Auburn’s going to do. That’s what everybody does. They’re just trying to get their athletes in space. One of the harder things to do in football is tackle in space. So it turns into a game of running and conditioning, you know. If those big guys can get out of the d-line and go chase things down, because usually one guys not going to make the tackle in all that space. So that showed up quite a bit and that’s stuff we’re working on.
On still deciding which true freshmen will play in 2018 – Yeah that’s always a tricky one for us. Even with the four games that they can play and still redshirt it’s not easy out of the gate. We talk about those four games right away, usually not. We’d like to use those late. So we’re talking about the guys who really might play the whole time. I guess we can hedge our bets if we do and something doesn’t work out. But we’re still working on that. I think there’s a couple guys we know of that are probably going to play that we’re leaning hard that way.
On if Petersen will share those names – No.
On using the two freshmen QB’s benefitting from the redshirt rule – That’s not the guys that I think of, you know. Because again if you get your backup quarterback in there, he needs as many reps as you can get. And usually in those times, if everybody is healthy, you’re trying to get him as much as you can. So to kind of piece meal it and get somebody on the field that’s going to take some handoff snaps. So that might happen. But that’s not really the guys that we’re super concentrated on, like what we’re going to do with those guys.
On the importance of special teams for true freshmen – I think that’s a big part of things, but we’re going to play our best guys on special teams. So if a freshman is on that then he’s one of our best guys at that position. We’re not going to risk anything by just putting guys out there. Special teams is too important to us. But we’d like to think that they can get on the field eventually. Not only offense and defense but in the special teams as well.
On Salvon Ahmed, Ty Jones and the other sophomores’ who played last season not thinking as much in camp this year – You definitely feel a difference with all the guys that played. Part of it’s thinking. Part of it’s just speed of the game. Part of its, you know, Ty Jones played in most games. You could see him growing and all those type of things as the season went on, but still probably didn’t get him the ball as much as we’d like to. He picked up speed at the end. No fault of his own. He made some good catches and all those things, but he feels like a different player right now. Just being with Salvon and all those guys. Those DB’s that played. That’s the beauty of playing those guys, even if they’re not starters. Even if they’re not getting significant, significant amount of time you really feel them the next year.
On having a high profile East Coast opener benefitting recruiting – We’re geographic recruiters. That doesn’t really have a whole lot to do with us. We don’t recruit the nation. If we have a fit, somebody has an interest, if there’s a connection then we’ll go across and make that happen. But we’re in the West. That’s always been our footprint. I think it’s awesome for everybody to see our program and a big game list this on TV. But in terms of recruiting, heck maybe some guy on the East Coast that’s a young guy, sees Washington and likes us for a long time, and he reaches out and has some sincere interest down the road then we’ll go.
On Hunter Bryant’s progression – I’ve just seen a lot of him in the training room is all I’ve seen from Hunter right now. He’s in coach Pao’s meetings. I think he’s doing a good job in there. He’s doing good. I mean every day he’s walking by and you don’t think he’s even injured or anything like that, but some of those just take time.
On Bryant being a luxury when he returns – Yeah you just always adapt and adjust. He’s obviously a guy that could do a lot of good things for us. But we just spin it a different way. If we got a guy and he needs to get the ball, we try to get him the ball how we can. If we don’t we go a different direction with who the next playmaker is and that’s kind of our mentality with Hunter being out right now.
On non-conference scheduling and Petersen’s thoughts on it – You know I think it’s too complicated for that, for me. My brain’s not smart enough to figure all that out. I think you play in this conference, and you win this conference, I think you’re going to be right there in the discussion. And depending on what your record is and all those type of things. There’s too many other things to worry about. Jen and everybody else plays close attention to that. I think we’ve talked at nauseam about how you’d like to schedule that. How you’d like to schedule it and what you get are completely different things. They’re just not certain games you can play, and as far out in advance as well. And certain teams look a certain way a few years. Then some look better, some look worse. It’s really complicated.
On the modern playoff structure and impact on playing better non-conference games – Yeah I don’t know. They knocked our schedule a few years ago and we went to the playoffs, so I don’t know. I just try to win the games that are in front of us. That’s how my philosophy was at Boise. We don’t worry about what – we just go play the games. You win all your games you’re going to the playoffs. That’s how I think.
