Washington has fired Jimmy Lake just 13 games into his tenure as the coach at Washington. This follows an "incident" where Lake shoved a player on the sideline. Many are making a big deal out of it but the university isn't trying to fire him for cause and the seat was already scalding for Lake. The athletic reported that part of the firing was due to performance on the field and with how terrible his offenses had been. They averaged just 22 points per game. They also lost to FCS Montana earlier this year.
The interesting thing is this was thought to be a home run hire at the time. Lake was a fantastic DC and an elite recruiter who promised the administration they would have a bit more of an intense approach to recruiting and have an SEC mindset. Chris Petersen was very vocal in supporting him getting the job as well. They ended up being pretty bad in recruiting finishing 6th in 2021 in the Pac12 and are sitting 8th in 22 according to 247. He missed on top in state recruits like Gee Scott, JTT, and Emeka Egbuka. Instead of taking responsiblity for the misses he said its because Washington was recruiting more academic kids and were competing with Stanford and not teams like Oregon. He also chose to hire obviously bad OC John Donovan who was fired by James Franklin at PSU and then was a quality control coach for 4 years(long time) before Lake brought him in.
Washington made a playoff under Petersen and should really be in a better spot than they are. USC, Oregon, and Washington should be the 3 powers in the Pac12. So this will be a very popular job. Some names:
- Cal HC Justin Wilcox
- Fresno State HC Kelen Deboar
- UVA HC Bronco Mendenhall
- Nevada HC Jay Norvell
Currently LSU, USC, Washington, Washington State, and TCU are P5 programs looking for new head coaches. Florida, Miami, VaTech, and Duke are potentially joining those schools along with any other schools who have their HC pulled away by USC or LSU.
