Retour
It was far from a perfect day for Washington's offensive line in their 17-10 comeback win at Nebraska on Saturday, as left guard John Mills was flagged for three of the six false starts that the Huskies were tagged with in the contest.
However, as the Huskies gave up 4 sacks to one of the Big Ten's best pass rushes, Jedd Fisch was still encouraged by the play of his tackles.
"Kodi Greene's best game as a Husky," Fisch said on Monday. "Drew Azzopardi played really well."
As for the interior, the head coach wants to see more following the loss of center Landen Hatchett, who will miss the remainder of the season with a head/neck/spine injury, and the Huskies needed both Kolt Dieterich and Geirean Hatchett to take reps in the middle.
"I think interior-wise, we need to continue to play better, but we had two centers play, both Kolt and Geirean, and they both did a good job of navigating the waters of handling an elite pass rusher (Jahsear Whittington), probably the best defense in the Big Ten when it's all said and done, or one of the top three defenses."
Without the younger Hatchett, the Huskies' struggles to run the ball continued, as they picked up just 32 yards on the ground. While that may not be as difficult against Penn State on Saturday, which ranks No. 16 in the conference in rushing yards allowed per game, Fisch urged for more from his entire offense as he listed Dieterich, who has started six games at center and was unable to finish the game at Nebraska, as questionable for Saturday's matchup with the Nittany Lions.
"To handle that up front is a challenge. I thought that our o-line gave us a chance there; we obviously want to run the football better than that. But that becomes the runner that becomes the tight ends, that becomes the receivers that becomes, the o-line can be a little bit better there to run the football at a higher clip than what we're running it at right now, so they can certainly always grade out better there. And then there was a couple of protection issues that we need to clean up, but again, we're not playing air, we're playing really, really good teams, and we're playing really, really good defenses, and really, really good teams that have really good defensive fronts, so it is a challenge each week."