One team is coached by a Patterson, the other by a Petersen.
They’ve both had quarterbacks step away from football, burned out and in need of adjustments beyond the theater of competitive athletics.
They’ve both endured ugly off-field incidents and general friction with players who were supposed to be anchors of their defense.
They have been forced to endure a lot of adversity and turmoil, leading them to wonder if brighter days would arrive.
The big difference? One team has walked over the hot coals of a college football season, reaching safe harbor and attaining ultimate success. The other team has not yet traversed that treacherous path, the one which leads from mediocrity to supremacy.
The point is plain, but the plainness does not detract from its power: The journey made last year by the TCU Horned Frogs gives the Washington Huskies hope for the future. What Gary Patterson has managed to achieve is what Chris Petersen — a former foe of Patterson’s in the brief time TCU and Boise State shared a place in the Mountain West — is hoping to replicate in Seattle.
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It’s remarkable that these two purple powers — TCU in the present tense, Washington in the past tense — can point to so many similarities in their situations. This magnifies what TCU has accomplished, and it also underscores how daunting a task Washington faces, both in the present moment and the near future.
Let’s start with TCU, not just because the Horned Frogs have successfully made the quantum leap from uncertainty to prosperity, but because a year ago, the doubts that coursed through the program were the doubts that presently exist in Seattle with U-Dub.
Remember TCU’s travails before its 2014 resurrection? When you consider how overwhelmingly good the Frogs so often were last season, it’s easy to think that a resurgence was to be expected, but that simply wasn’t the case as September of 2014 arrived. TCU did not take the field with Fields — Devonte Fields, a member of the defensive line who was supposed to spearhead the Horned Frogs’ pass rush. Fields’s waywardness got him booted from the program, just the latest in a series of dismissals TCU had to make over a number of years. Patterson, as head coach, kept thinking that he had the right pieces in place to newly build his program in its power-conference home, the Big 12. Yet, just when he was on the verge of assembling the roster he wanted, something off the field ruined everything.
In addition to these events, TCU experienced the specific gut-punch of seeing its starting quarterback fall into trouble, to the extent that he needed instruction and healing in elements of life far more important than football.
Casey Pachall struggled with alcoholism and was ambushed by the difficulties and pressures of managing life as a high-profile athlete. As much as TCU hoped he could have improved his career, the need to tend to his health — and his safety — acquired primary importance. The best interests of the person and the best interests of the program did not converge, and so TCU had to take another step back before having the chance to move forward. This is what the 2012 and 2013 seasons brought to Fort Worth, and when the 2014 offseason continued the parade of negative events, it was hard to think that TCU was going to enjoy a renaissance so quickly.
As we transfer to the scene in Seattle, Washington’s probably not going to put all the pieces together in 2015. Oregon and Stanford still stand in the way of the Huskies in the Pac-12 North. However, Washington and Petersen definitely need to give fans a clear indication that the UW program is making progress. Without that, a crisis of confidence could persist, preventing Petersen from establishing the culture shift which needs to take place in the Pacific Northwest.
In Washington’s attempt to change the culture, one obstacle after another has surfaced… and the portrait is all too similar to what TCU had faced.
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Off-field problems? Check. Marcus Peters, who was supposed to be a dynamic defensive player, never got along with the coaching staff and was suspended for an early-season game. He was later kicked off the team. Well after the season ended, Peters conceded that he deserved to be dismissed… but that really didn’t help the football team in its time of need.
A quarterback burned out and in need of restoration beyond the gridiron? Check. Cyler Miles has stepped away from football — perhaps not as dramatically as Casey Pachall did, but enough to throw a monkey wrench into the program’s plans. A hip injury did not help, to be sure, but Miles took a voluntary leave from the team for personal reasons earlier this year before retiring due to his hip injury in late June. As has been the case for several prominent Husky players since Petersen came aboard, Miles never really felt comfortable within his own skin or in the program at large. For Washington, as was the case at TCU, assembled pieces are not fitting into the larger puzzle.
Gary Patterson and Chris Petersen both won BCS bowls in previous years. They both showed just how great they can be at their jobs. Yet, for all that Patterson had accomplished at TCU, the Frogs were seriously doubted in their attempt to climb the ladder in the Big 12. Don’t apply revisionist history to the Frogs — they were not trusted heading into 2014.
Similarly, despite his many large-scale achievements as a head coach at Boise State, Petersen is staring down a lot of doubts about his ability to lift Washington to the level currently occupied by Oregon (and recently occupied by Stanford). The pathway of a current purple power in Fort Worth is the pathway a former purple power wants to replicate in Seattle.
It will be fascinating to see if Chris Petersen and Washington can follow in TCU’s footsteps.