UW’s Chris Petersen on Husky Olympics, freshmen, academics and more

Here’s everything Washington coach Chris Petersen said after Tuesday’s practice:

(How do you break up the monotony of camp?) “Husky Olympics! It’s all about the Husky Olympics. We have about eight things that we compete about. We have a bowling contest. They are in teams. Home Run Derby with tennis rackets and tennis balls in the stadium. Had the free throw shooting contest already, so the things are starting to shake out. The Husky Olympics are very important around here.”

(Is it similar to the Peach Bowl, where they had all those activities for you?) “Right. Except for this it’s teams and they are competing to win and have a presentation each night after an event. That is one thing that helps.”

(On having the food trucks out at Husky Stadium tonight) “That’s one thing that’s very important around here is food, for sure. So we make sure it’s as good as it can be with as much health as it can bring to it as well.”

(Do you like the attitude, the work of the team after a week?) “Absolutely. But I think as we go forward from here we’re really interested in the next two weeks as a coaching staff. It’s one day at a time, it’s one meeting at a time. These next two weeks will be — I think everybody in America is going to go out and have a good first week. If you don’t you’ve got big issues. Everyone can have a good first week, and should. It’s kind of when you move forward from there.”

(What did you see from Sunday’s tape? First day in pads …) “The only thing that’s different when we go in pads is we’ll do a little cutting, a little more live. Other than that our practices seem very much the same all the time. They practice fast, they are trying to practice with great posture, they are imagining and visualizing things, so I kind of like it that it doesn’t feel that different when we put pads on.”

(Seems like over the years there a lot less emphasis on hitting, less contact during fall camp) “I don’t think we’re that much different than we’ve been the last few years. I don’t know what else is going on around the rest of the country but I think you can get better at tackling, you can get better at playing football by not having full, live contact all the time. I think it’s our job as coaches to figure out how to make that happen without being in a full-on scrimmage all the time. We’ll probably have as little live plays as we’ve ever had but our live plays are really important. We have to do some of that to get better: we understand that. I still think you can improve rapidly and dramatically without full-on tackling to the ground. Because there’s a lot of contact going on without tackling to the ground.”

(Have you seen a correlation between less live work during fall camp and staying healthier as a team?) “Yeah, I think so. I see our guys get dinged, just little stuff anyways. But you try to be smart and minimize the odds as much as you can. So we’ll see. It’s a long month.”

Free throw contest turned dunk contest! #PurpleReign #HuskyOlympics pic.twitter.com/Ko1wb4mphP

— Coach Petersen (@CoachPeteUW) August 8, 2017

(on Bleacher Report story published Tuesday about UCLA’s Josh Rosen saying school and football not going hand-in-hand) “I’ve been saying this for a long time: I think it’s really hard to be a college football player. It’s harder than being a pro football player. Not the level of football, but what they have on their plate. I totally agree with that. You’ve got college in general and then you have these academics that are extremely time-consuming, by time commitment and also mental — there’s always something right around the corner you’re going to have to deal with, especially with the quarter system (at UW). It goes so fast. And then you’ve got this really important football thing going on as well. I don’t think most people realize that are not in the mix every day how hard that is and how much they do have on their plate. But this is what college is. This is not pro football. They are here to get an education. They can do it, it’s been proven many times. Is it hard? Yeah. Not everybody can do this.”

(After Week 1, behind or ahead of schedule in any areas) “Definitely not ahead. Definitely not ahead. You just kind of go back, and are going to make some mistakes sometimes that you think you shouldn’t make. But sometimes you make plays you are like, ‘OK, that was good, they sorted that assignment out pretty cleanly.’ It is just one day at a time. Like I said, the first week is good. Let’s see where we go this week. In another six days, we will look back and see where we are, and we’ll just keep challenging the guys every day to come out with great energy and focus.”

(Most pleased about after Week 1 of fall camp) “They did what we asked in Week 1. They practiced very hard. They were very attentive in the meetings. They picked up a lot of the schemes we threw at them. There weren’t a bunch of assignment complete busts – there were some busts, but they were details that we will clean up.”

(Timetable to decide on which freshmen will redshirt?) “Everybody is different. We’ve made decisions (in the past) by Game 4 if guys are going to go when it was by the end of fall camp, we were going to redshirt the guy. All of a sudden, some injuries happen. It is always a work in progress. We’re always evaluating it. There might be some guys in the next two weeks that we say, ‘This guy is going to play.’ It’s a long season, so they are all competing to play.’ And that is what we tell them, ‘It doesn’t matter if you are fourth string right now – you might be first string in another couple of weeks.’ That is just how it goes. I know some of the new guys look at us, ‘What, what are you talking about?’ We’ve seen it all. They’ve just got to keep playing.”

(Right now, what is the best evaluation to see how freshmen are picking up things?) “That is a big part of it. There are a couple parts to it, but one is certainly – they don’t have to pick up everything, but they’ve got to pick up a lot. We just see who can handle it, because we do game-plan, we do tweak things, ‘Is the guy going to be able to handle it week to week when we change it on him?’ So that is an important part. But it’s also just the speed of the game, the physicality of the game and can they handle all three of those things, really. And getting back to the school question, ‘OK, is this guy going to be ready to do it all – throwing school in there and still going to be OK, or does he need to redshirt to take care of school, like he needs more time for that.’ I always marvel at the kids who play as true freshmen. There are more and more playing. I can’t imagine back way when I was in college to come to something like this and be thrown into the mix, it is hard.”

(on the head coach also being a father figure …) “We tell all of our kids’ parents: We get. I get it. I know it was like when my son just went away to college. And I’ve got another one going (next year). You’d like someone around them that’s going to emphasize the things that they’ve been emphasizing for the last 17, 18 years anyway and to continue that. This is an important, critical part of their life. They don’t have it figured out yet — we’re here to help them figure it out. That’s our job.”

(on fighting in practice) “It’s hard. I mean, it’s hard. Most males have a problem with poise anyway, just in society. So we get out in the football field and it’s competitive and when someone makes you mad it’s very, very challenging. So we work on it. That’s part of the game to work on. We try to treat practice like a game. We just had one of our guys out there lose his poise and we took him out — you don’t get any more practice. It’s like being thrown out of a game. It’s not something that’s easy to do. They really have to work on it and hopefully we get better at it.”