Tag Archives: Jermaine Kearse

by | January 22, 2012 · 12:38 pm

2012 UW Wide Receivers

Looking at the current roster, with minimal attention paid to the 2012 recruiting class.

Who They Lose

Jermaine Kearse

Devin Aguilar

Kearse had a very contentious career for a guy who is probably one of the five or so greatest receivers ever at UW.  He made play after play and caught a huge amount of touchdowns.  I can’t get the Husky record book to open right now, but he’s near the top in a number of categories.  The consistent issues with drops plagued Kearse.  More than a few had major effects on games and kept him from being a huge fan favorite.  He was never quite what he could have been because of the drops, but he is still a huge threat to replace.  Aguilar was a little more consistent but not quite the playmaking threat that Kearse was.  Still, he made a lot of catches at critical moments.  Replacing these two is a fairly tall order.  They both had flaws, but they are clearly one of the better WR combos the Huskies have ever had.

Who Is Back

Kasen Williams- Sophomore

James Johnson- Senior

Cody Bruns- Senior

Kevin Smith- Junior

The saving grace in an otherwise lackluster group is Williams.  It took him half the season to get going, but once he did, all the hype he brought with him seemed inadequate to the actual talent he possesses.  He looked faster than expected, and his overall athleticism is ridiculous.  His leap over a Cougar in the Apple Cup is already legendary.  I expect Kasen will take a huge jump forward this year and be one of the best receivers in a conference full of good ones. Continue reading →

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by | September 20, 2011 · 2:36 pm

Huskies at the Quarter Pole

It’s hard to believe, but the Husky season is already at the quarter point.  Our Dawgs’ have the record we all expected them to have after 3 games, 2-1, even if they’ve taken a strange route to get there.

September started with a game against Eastern Washington where the Huskies were outplayed in almost every area of the game.  They got the win, but panic ensued around Husky nation and people were upset.  Next, Hawaii came in and the Dawgs came out on fire.  They jumped to a 21-0 lead and seemed like a team who could compete with the best of the best.  Then they let Hawaii back into it and held on for a victory.  The Huskies were 2-0 for the first time since 2007 but neither victory provided a ton of confidence in the team.

Yesterday, they went into one of the toughest places to play in the country.  They stood toe-to-toe with Nebraska in the first half, and by all accounts would have had the lead going into halftime if it weren’t for a terrible call.  Then, the third quarter started.  A three-and-out, a terrible call on a punt, a touchdown, a fumbled kick-off, a touchdown, a turnover on downs, and a touchdown later the Huskies were down by 24.

It was a terrible stretch to watch and, judging from post-game interviews, was even worse to play in.  Now that I’ve cooled off and watched the rest of the game, I’ve realized that those stretches are one of the many reasons why I love college football.  On any Saturday, a team can be totally swept up in the momentum of the game and anything can happen.  These players are taking calculus and history classes during the week and all of a sudden they’re dealing with poor officiating and bad bounces of the ball and they completely lose their composure.  That happened to us on Saturday and I’m not saying it’s acceptable, it’s not, but that’s college football and it’s part of the reason why it’s so exciting.

Anyway, the Huskies regained their composure and went on to battle back, fighting valiantly to the finish.  It wasn’t the outcome we had hoped for, but it was probably the best game the Huskies have played all season.

I’ll break down each position after the jump.  Continue reading →

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by | September 2, 2011 · 10:21 pm

UW vs. EWU Predictions

It’s finally here.  Without further ado, here are the Good Guy predictions for the battle royale at Husky Stadium tomorrow.

Joe

Eastern is no slouch, and I don’t think the Huskies will treat them as such. I believe Sark has the Huskies focused and prepared to play the Eagles at a high tempo and tons of emotion. I expect the Eagles to come out jacked and just as prepared, which I think will help the UW get “up” quicker than normal, especially when playing a perceived easy win. I honestly see the Huskies running the ball early, then working the middle of the field with ASJ. I expect Callier to get the bulk of the carries, even if Polk somehow plays or Fogerson. I’d be all for Callier getting a ton of carries. I think the Huskies WRs corps could be unstoppable, how EWU will combat that I have no idea. Defensively the Huskies will be fine, EWU hasn’t seen this level of talent in FCS. There won’t be a shutout, but I don’t expect EWU to move the ball at will. Early season game, lots of jitters, emotions, there will be crazy plays, blown assignments, timing will be off, and the Dawgs will win:

UW 31 – EWU 14

Dan

Even when Washington tries to schedule a cupcake for once, they fail. Eastern is no slouch, and if this were a week 2 game, or god forbid it was being played on the red turf, I’d be very nervous. But the Huskies are at home, and given that this is the first game, the players have had all offseason to think about the Eagles. Bo Levi Mitchell is a legit QB and he has a veteran group of receivers to throw to. I expect Eastern will move the offense through the air, and rack up decent passing totals between the 20s, but the Huskies are too deep, too talented, and too hungry to start 1-0. They can’t lose this game, and they won’t.

Washington–30, Ea. Washington–20

Andrew

If you follow the Huskies at all, you know this week the theme by the coaches has been “1-0.”  In fact, Sark has said that this was the theme since fall camp began.  “1-0.”  The Huskies haven’t started the season with a win since 2007, and if you remember that it wasn’t a feel good win.  We’ve also heard all week about how good Eastern Washington is.  It seems every person in the state has said, “Eastern is going to surprise on Saturday.”  I have no doubt that Eastern is a very good football team that is in the FCS.  But, they’re no match for the team they’ll face on Saturday.  They don’t have as much depth, talent, and it will take a minor miracle for them to win this game.  I’m sure the Dawgs are sick of hearing how Eastern is going to surprise them.  I’m sure they’re sick of Eastern players saying, “The Huskies don’t respect us” or things to that extent even though no Husky player or coach has come close to saying that.  It’s a Saturday on Montlake and Husky football is on its way back.  The Dawgs make it a bit stressful but then dominate.  Welcome back Huskies, I’ve been waiting for this since a certain night in late December.

Huskies 38, EWU 13 

Matthew

Eastern is certainly scarier than the typical FCS team, but I think their talent is maybe getting a bit overblown.  Could the Huskies lose this game?  Sure, it’s possible, I guess.  Will they? Not a chance in the world.  Eastern might score a few points, but I can’t see this being close.  My only question is how long it takes the Huskies to break away.  In past years, they’ve started slowly in the few blow outs they’ve had before pulling away later.  This Saturday, I’m hoping the first quarter has Jesse Callier running through 10-foot holes, Jermaine Kearse 20 feet behind the EWU secondary, and Bo Levi Mitchell flat on his back after every play.  Go Dawgs!

UW 48, EWU 17

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by | October 5, 2010 · 4:01 pm

A Few More Thoughts After Rewatching the Husky Game

Well, it took me 2 days but I finally made it through all of the USC game.  I can only wonder how many times I would watch it if it wasn’t a busy week.   Anyway, I came away with a few more thoughts that I’ll share before putting this game to rest and moving on to this week’s opponent,  Arizona State.

  • Let’s start with the worst part of the game, the rushing defense.  There’s no denying that they were terrible.  After watching it again, it was very clear that the problems weren’t because of a lack of schemes.  They tried just about everything.  They put at least 8 guys in the box every time.  I counted 10 guys in the box for several plays.  10 guys!  They also tried a 3-4 several times to be a little more athletic.  The problem was with what was happening on the field.  The defensive line was terrible.  Ta’amu played a decent game, but the rest of the defensive line was awful.  There were guys getting pushed back 5-10 yards every play.  Then, the linebackers seemed a bit timid.  They didn’t attack the runner for most of the game, they let the runner come to them.  By the time the runner got there, those linebackers were blocked.  I understand that they can’t completely sell out against the run because they have to watch for play-action, but their reaction time does need to be quicker.  Last but not least, the tackling was terrible.  It was just as bad as it was against Nebraska, if not worse.  I was on a mission to count the missed tackles but I lost track.  I lost track at the end of the first quarter.
  • One more negative thought on the defense before we move to brighter spots.   I think several players had the worst game of their career on Saturday.  Nate Fellner had one great pass break-up, but the rest of the game he struggled.  He was sucked into the wrong position and missed quite a few tackles.  Quinton Richardson missed an easy sack on Barkley because he forgot he had arms on the play.  He was taken out after that, I’ll be interested to see if he plays as much the rest of this season.  Where is Adam Long?  Cort Dennison looked a little rusty and slow after missing the Nebraska game.  Those players, along with the defensive line, were beaten up pretty well on Saturday.  Thank goodness we have Mason Foster.
  • With all that, give credit to the defense for not allowing a touchdown in the 4th quarter.  They buckled down and made some stops.  There’s no doubt they need to get better, but they made some plays that kept the Huskies in the game.

More thoughts after the jump. Continue reading →

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by | September 12, 2010 · 1:34 pm

Huskies Post Game: Syracuse

The Huskies got their first win of the year last night at Husky Stadium against Syracuse, 41-20. The Dawgs’ struggled early on; there wasn’t any offensive rhythm and special team’s mistakes led to an early 10-0 lead for the Orange.  But, then the Huskies found it.  They played like the team we had planned on seeing this year.  They outscored Syracuse 41-10 through the rest of the game and it wasn’t much of a contest after the first couple plays in the second half.

Jermaine Kearse had a monster day (9 receptions for 179 yards), as the offense used big plays to dominate.  The defense was solid too.  They gave up two or three big plays but the two touchdowns Syracuse scored were because of a special teams penalty and a turnover.

I’ll review this one by taking a look at each position.  I haven’t been able to find a replay anywhere yet, FSN decided to show a replay of Wyoming and Texas instead, so I won’t be as thorough as I’d like to be but these were my first impressions from being there.  Continue reading →

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by | September 1, 2010 · 1:53 pm

UW Huskies Offensive Preview

In 2009, the Husky offense was largely inconsistent, often showing excellent playmaking ability up until the time they needed to score on the goal line or keep a drive going late in the game.  The hope is this year they will find that consistency and become the high-powered threat that their talent suggests.

Quarterback

Starter: Jake Locker  Maybe you’ve heard of this guy.  Senior starter who passed up millions to try to lead his team to a bowl game and make a run at the Heisman trophy.  He could be the best quarterback in the country, but he does need to make improvements, chiefly with his accuracy.  Sarkisian has him aiming for a 70% completion rate and 3/1 touchdown to interception ratio, which would be a season for the ages.  He likely won’t quite make that, but there’s no bigger threat at the position in the country.

Depth: Keith Price & Nick Montana  The two backups are still fighting for the job, although it appears Price has pulled ahead for now.  Price is more of an athlete who has struggled with his accuracy at times.  Montana, son of Joe, has the smarts but maybe not quite the arm strength or physical maturity yet.  Price will likely backup on a game to game basis, but if Locker went down for an extended period, either might take over.

Analysis: If Locker stays healthy, it doesn’t get much better.  If he goes down, it’s hard to say what would happen with Price or Montana under center. Continue reading →

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by | April 17, 2010 · 5:11 pm

Huskies Practice Report – 4/17/2010

The Huskies completed their 3rd week of practices this afternoon.  There was a little rain as the practice began but then the sun poked through the clouds, Nirvana and Jimi Hendrix came through the speakers, and I became very thankful that I live in Seattle.  There were about a thousand people at the practice including quite a few high school and junior college coaches who were attending the UW coaches clinic.  I spotted Paul Wulff trying watching the coaches, trying to figure out how to coach his own players (that was a joke and completely false).

To tell you the truth, there wasn’t a lot to report today.  During the team drills there was a lot of work on special teams.  Most of the practice was pretty typical and then there was about a half an hour scrimmage at the end.  The offense dominated early in the practice and then the defense had the upper hand in the scrimmage portion. 

Nick Holt was even more animated than usual today.  At one point he made the entire second string defense do up-downs after a 10 yard play by the offense.  The coaching staff has to be in such great shape because they sprint everywhere.  They really set the tone for this team.

The defense used a few different looks today.  Alvin Logan rushed off the edge quite a bit in the scrimmage and was quite effective in doing so.  He might be playing defensive end on 3rd downs this season.  They rotated linebackers a lot more today than they usually do.  I imagine they are just finding who is best where and when.  They also went to a 3-4 at times today, it seemed to work pretty well.

At this point in spring everyone seems to be settling in on where they should be in the depth chart.  Sure, every once in a while someone will bust out with a great practice but it’s usually the same suspects every practice now.  It’s nice to see that consistency because I don’t know if there were players who would consistently have good practices on the Huskies a few years ago.

With that said here are my players of the day:

  • Jermaine Kearse was great today.  He scored 6 touchdowns in a row during drills.  I think he ended up with about 10 on the day.  The Huskies don’t have a corner who can defend him and I don’t know if anyone in the Pac-10 does. 
  • James Johnson also made some very good catches.  He got called for two offensive pass interference penalties but one of them was extremely questionable.  In the offenses only touchdown drive in the scrimmage, Johnson came up big several times.  He is pretty physical and looks bigger than he did last Fall.
  • Chris Robinson is a red-shirt defensive tackle who has played well all spring.  He continued to do so today, getting into the backfield and making some tackles.  I think him and Tyrone Duncan may have played themselves into the rotation for next season. 
  • Demetrius Bronson had a few very physical runs today.  He may not carry the ball very often because he is switching between fullback and running back right now but, I think Bronson would be very good at the goal line as long as he takes care of his fumbling problems.  With that being said, Polk and Cooper are/will be very good at the goal line also. 
  • The freshman running backs were good.  I’m going to stop putting this in the practice reports and you can all assume that they were good.  I can’t wait for my fellow good guys to see them in action and then say how excited they are about them.  If they play like they’re capable of on April 30th people will be buzzing about Jesse Callier and Deontae Cooper through the whole summer.  

Other guys were good too but you already knew that because their names are Jake Locker, Mason Foster, and Cort Dennison.

Two more weeks of practice to go.  I like what I’ve seen overall but I’ll save that for another post.  Now, it’s time to watch the Mariners and Justin Verlander (if the Mariners get shut down tonight, which is entirely possible, take a minute to enjoy how good Verlander is.  He is the Tiger’s Felix.  Should be fun to watch regardless of what happens).  Thanks for reading!

Andrew

Andrew

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by | April 1, 2010 · 10:53 pm

Huskies Practice Report – 4/1/10

Unfortunately, I couldn’t get to the practice report sooner because I drove home to Yakima right after practice concluded.  It was another chilly day at Montlake today but the place was hoppin’!  There were softball and baseball games going on, those combined with the open practice made for a fun environment of about 3,000 people.  The team practiced without pads again today so it’s a little hard to get a read on who had a good day and who had a bad day.  They will get into pads and start tackling next week.

Sark seemed a little more animated today than he did on Tuesday (not that he wasn’t animated on Tuesday, just more so today).  He was getting after players when mistakes happened and shouting praise after good plays.  This coaching staff is extremely fun to watch; they’re almost as entertaining as watching the players sometimes.  If the team is lacking energy the coaching staff brings it.  I spent quite a bit of time watching the secondary coach, Demetrice Martin, and the running back coach, Joel Thomas.  These are two guys who move around as much as their players do.  Martin sticks up for his defensive backs and it’s easy to see that the players really enjoy him.

One of the stories of spring practice is the backup quarterback position battle.  The backup probably won’t be decided until Fall but it’d be nice if one or both of these guys had an amazing spring.  They both struggled at times today.  Montana threw some very good passes in the scrimmage session but during drills he threw 3 interceptions in a row.  Price is inconsistent and I don’t know if his arm will ever be something we can count on.  If the season started tomorrow I’d be worried.  Fortunately, it doesn’t and we have two of the best quarterback coaches in the country (Sark and Nuss) and one of the best quarterbacks in the country for these guys to learn from.  They are both trying to learn at every point; they are interacting with Locker in every opportunity they can and I saw both of them talking to Tui many times.  (Speaking of Tui, the quarterbacks were going through the routes and progressions with Nussmeier early in the practice and throwing the passes to Marques.  It was pretty cool to see.)

As if Locker wasn’t already a great leader, it’s obvious that he’s making even more of an effort this year.  It’s hard to explain just how much he interacts with the guys while trying to make himself better but it’s impressive to see.  I’m going to devote one of these practices to just watching him and will do a post on that. 

So, who had a good day today?  As I already mentioned it’s somewhat hard to tell without full contact but here are a few guys I came away impressed with:

  • Anthony Boyles.  Again.  I’m trying to not get too excited about him but it’s already getting difficult.  There were several times where I thought, “Wow, I need to text the fellow good guys to tell them how great Boyles looks.”  I’m not the only one who’s noticing either.  Jermaine Kearse, Devin Aguilar, and Jake Locker seem to be taking notice.  Boyles enjoys a little friendly trash talking after he or his fellow cornerbacks make a play.  Kearse doesn’t seem to enjoy that too much so after Boyles dominated for a while Kearse decided he would only go against A.B.  (that’s what the players call him, I figure the Good Guys might as well too.)  Kearse had his way a few times but Boyles held his own.  By my count, between drills and little scrimmages, Boyles had 3 pass breakups and an interception.  He got beat once by Kearse and heard about that from Locker and Kearse.  When he has those two talking trash to him about a completion I think that shows that he’s becoming a playmaker in the secondary.  (If you make it to a practice watch Boyles and Vonzell McDowell, they’re hilarious when they get going and extremely entertaining.)
  • Semisi Tokolahi.  I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to pronounce this guys name.  Tokolahi is a defensive tackle and it’s really hard to judge lineman when they aren’t blocking with all their effort.  Despite this Tokolahi has impressed the coaches enough to rotate with the other 1st defensive tackles (Alameda Ta’amu and Cameron Elisara).  Today he had a pass deflection and got in the backfield a few times.  He’s a big strong guy who could do a good job plugging up the middle of the defense.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see Tokolahi play himself into some playing time.
  • Jermaine Kearse.  Just get used to seeing his name on these lists.
  • Jake Locker.  Same as Kearse.
  • The entire secondary.  I already singled out Boyles for his good play but this entire secondary was pretty impressive today.  Especially during drills.  I really think we’ll see a lot more man-to-man defense this year.
  • Jesse Callier.  I forgot to mention him on Tuesday.  Him and Cooper are the two new freshmen running backs and both look like they could be Polk’s backup. 

Nothing really anything bad to report.  Sure there were some inconsistencies in the backup quarterbacks, a few dropped passes, a fumble or two, and some mixed up assignments but it’s the second day of spring practice and those problems are normal.

Cody Bruns appears to be the holder for the team.  The kicking was pretty bad today but I’m going to blame that on the wind and some bad holds.  I don’t think we need to worry about Erik Folk.

The punt-returners today were Deontae Cooper, Jesse Callier, Devin Aguilar, Jordan Polk and Johri Fogerson (I may have missed someone here).  My early money is on Cooper but I think any of these guys would be just fine returning kicks and/or punts.

One last practice note is that 2011 recruit WR Kasen Williams and 2012 recruit OL Zach Banner were at practice today.  Banner was standing on the field most of the day and is huge.  He was bigger than some of the Husky offensive lineman.  Williams was a little harder to find and wasn’t as involved in watching the practice as Banner was.  Williams is considered one of the best receiver recruits in the country and Banner is a lineman that the Huskies would love to get.

Well, that’s about it for today.  I write more words than I think I will on these.  As Dan noted earlier, this is our 100th post!  It’s a little bit of a shame that the 100th post is this lame but I want to take this opportunity to thank you all for reading.  This blog has been so much fun for me and I’m fairly sure the other Good Guys agree.  We look forward to keep writing to whatever audience is out there and we’re honored that you choose to read posts that we write.  As our friends over on Montlake Madness say, thanks for coming!

Andrew

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