An Abridged (and Completely Unbiased) Version of What Went Down

Colorado started with the ball. Dumb Washington fans were stoked for some sweet sweet Buff-bashing. Smart Washington fans weren’t.

The smart Washington fans were quickly vindicated: Colorado marched down the field like Napoleon discovering continental Europe. Dumb Washington fans flipped their tables and shouted words like “Bad play calling!” and “We’re bad!” and “Bad!” and “That Colorado quarterback will shred Washington’s defensive backs who clearly know nothing and I know everything and am so wise!” Smart Washington fans shook their heads, cocky in their ability to (A) be right and (B) know that in football, there is more than “good” or “bad.” (See also: in everything.)

Then the Huskies’ offense was on the field. They looked mediocre. This was completely in line with Smart Washington Fans’ expectations for the first drive who were still scared but were expecting that emotion, anyway, so it didn’t really matter. One SWF picked up “Also Sprach Zarathustra,” to read Nietzche’s famous passages on human suffering. Dumb Washington Fans yelled about how Myles Gaskin sucks.

The first quarter ended a lowly 7-0. Smart Washington Fans activated their signature move of stress-vomiting off the porch. Even so, they remained tentatively optimistic.

The second quarter started. “Oh, it’s the second quarter,” said Jake “Surprisingly Normie-Looking” Browning. “We should probably stop not scoring.” Then they stopped not scoring and started scoring. “Ohhh. So that’s what we’re supposed to do,” cooed the offensive line in unison.

In the huddle, center Coleman Shelton brought to light a rather important development: “Hey lads, some author of a Washington column on some site has Gaskin on her fantasy team. We should run him off-tackle all day.” So they did that some. It turned out Myles Gaskin did not, in fact, suck.

What did suck, however, was the kicking, as the success of Tristan Vizcaino’s field goal game landed somewhere between Oregon’s-ability-to-not-blow-a-31-point-lead and TAMU’s-ability-to-not-blow-a-34-point-lead. In total, he missed two field goals and one extra point. That blew.

Of those seven lost points, three were from when Colorado led by a touchdown, three were from when Washington led by a touchdown, and the last one was after the game was out of reach for the Buffs. This was the only point in the game where Smart and Dumb Washington Fans were united as, after the second missed field goal, both species were throwing half-full cans of Rainier Beer at their TV and/or neighbor’s house.

Luckily for all (except Coloradoians, which is totally a word), T-Vizzy’s last missed point was irrelevant. Getting to such a point involved instances that resulted in the following game notes:

wait is the pass rush good now?

is ryan bowman good now? when did that happen?

that’s good tho if 4 real

quinton quentin quintin pounds jesus christ that catch

how do you spell quinten pounds’ name?

life goal: never have vita vea run after you

While the game began with Dumb Washington Fans yelling stuff like “Huskies are clearly pretenders!” and “Browning should have thrown it!” and “Browning shouldn’t have thrown it!”, it ended with Dumb Washington Fans yelling stuff like “Buffs suck!” and “Montez sucks!” and “Let me tell you my opinion on Steph Curry!”

Meanwhile, Smart Washington Fans gave up their stress-pacing, stress-eating, stress-throwing-up-what-they-had-just-stress-eaten, etc., to be reminded why that ever-present cautious optimism was there in the first place.

Actual Non-Malarkey Takeaways

I mentioned the diversity of defensive fronts last week and noticed it was still a continuing trend against Colorado, albeit a bit less blatant. I’m 98% sure I’m down with this; Chris Petersen has shown he doesn’t fight the evolution of the game and the innovation that is necessary with that. We’re looking at another little example.

Yes, the final score looked good. And the defense played mostly awesome minus that first drive. And I know Myles Gaskin had a mostly awesome night. And I know the run-blocking looked way better. But there’s still something that worries me about this team and that worry won’t be alleviated until I see a 100% complete game from them.

I usually like Tristan Vizcaino but sweet baby Jesus that was awful. He’s great at kickoffs (and has the speed to actually defend kickoffs when it becomes necessary), and he’s been pretty okay as a field goal kicker. Saturday, however, he’s lucky the team kicked it into high-gear later on because if Washington had ended up losing to Colorado by less than seven points, that boy would be Public Enemy #1 on Montlake. #CollegeKickers, yo.

Guard Jesse Sosebee was pissing me off the first bit of the game with a combination of missed blocks and little mistakes but as the game went on he had some really strong plays. Seeing that progress over the course of 60 minutes has me optimistic; if he gets better like he did from the beginning to the end of the CU game, the offensive line could return to being a strength of this offense.

That Quinten Pounds catch made me feel three things: (1) Happiness, because touchdowns for Washington are good and (2) Sadness, because we don’t see that craziness from him ever, really and (3) Hope? Will we look back, on the eve of 2018, at this game as his breakout? Or was that catch just an anomaly in his so far nondescript college career?

Next stop: Oregon State.

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