The No. 22 Washington Huskies(2-1) are looking to string two consecutive victories for the first time this season when they travel to Provo to face the Cougars Saturday afternoon. The Huskies trounced Eastern Washington 47-14 in the season opener, lost a 20-19 heartbreaker to the California Golden Bears and dispatched the Hawai’i Rainbow Warriors 52-20 and improve to 2-1 for the season. The Cougars are on a two game win streak after losing their season opener to Utah (30-12) then winning two consecutive overtime games over Tennessee (29-26) and USC (30-27)
CAN THE HUSKY DEFENSE FIND ITS RHYTHM
The Husky defense has yet to play a complete game. In the opener against Eastern the Husky defense gave up touchdowns in the second and fourth quarter. In the loss to Cal the Huskies surrendered seventeen second half points and it was more of the same in the win over Hawai’i when the Rainbows erupted for 21 third quarter points. If the Huskies are to get back to their dominant ways and stop a high efficient BYU offense led by Zach Wilson they will need to play hard, fast and execute on defense .
CAN THE GROUND GAME LEAD THE WAY
The Huskies trio of running backs, Salvon Ahmed, Richard Newton and Sean McGrew have accounted for 514 of the teams 619 rushing yards. Ahmed leads the bunch with 253 yards on 44 carries and two touchdowns. Newton has shown exceptional speed and quickness in the red zone and leads the group with four touchdowns. McGrew had his best game of the season in the Hawai’i game with 8 carries for 63 yards and one touchdown.
While Husky head coach Chris Petersen has said all season that he needs all three running backs one of three will need to catch fire if the Huskies are going to have any success against a strong and disciplined BYU defense led by junior linebacker Kavika Fonua. The former running back leads the Cougars in tackles and recorded 13 tackles in the USC game.
WILL EASON CONTINUE TO IMPROVE
Petersen praised quarterback Jacob Eason for his improvement in the win over the Hawai’i and the praise was well deserved given Eason’s stat line of 18-25-for 262 yards and three touchdowns. Can Eason continue to improve and take command of the offense with not only accurate passing but calling the right check downs when checking down to the run game. No doubt BYU will give try and confuse Eason with multiple looks on defense.
GAME NOTES
- BYU and Washington are meeting for the 11th time in the series. The Cougars trail 4-6 but are 3-1 in
- Provo.
- Last year the Huskies rolled to a 35-7 win in Seattle. The last time the game was in Provo was 2010 when BYU
- defeated Washington 23-17, a team led by former Cougar quarterback and then head coach of the Huskies, Steve Sarkisian.
- •PAC-12. The Cougars are facing the third of three Pac-12 teams on the schedule with No. 21/22 Washington this week.
- After falling to No. 15 Utah in the season opener, BYU bounced back to beat No. 24 USC last week. BYU is 74-128-6 against
- the current Pac-12.
TEAM COMPARISONS
| UW | TEAM COMPARISONS | BYU |
| 39.3 | SCORING OFFENSE | 23.7 |
| 18.0 | SCORING DEFENSE | 27.7 |
| 24.0 | FIRST DOWNS | 17.7 |
| 192.2 | RUSHING OFFENSE | 110.0 |
| 132.0 | RUSHING DEFENSE | 225.0 |
| 264.0 | PASSING OFFENSE | 246.3 |
| 192.0 | PASSING DEFENSE | 197.7 |
| 456.0 | TOTAL OFFENSE | 356.3 |
| 324.0 | TOTAL DEFENSE | 412.7 |
| 23.7 | KICKOFF RETURNS | 16.3 |
| 5.6 | PUNT RETURN | 0.0 |
| 43.3 | PENALTIES YPG | 55.0 |
| 43.3 | NET PUNTING | 39.7 |
| 30:30 | TIME OF POSSESSION | 25:50 |
| 46.2 | 3RD DOWN% | 43.9 |
| 66.7 | 4th DOWN % | 0.0 |
| 8-54 | SACK-YARDS | 3-19 |
| 5-14 | SACKS ALLOWED | 8-44 |
| 92.3 | RED ZONE % | 92.3 |
| 88.9 | OPP RED ZONE % | 72.7 |
PREDICTION
The Huskies have a veteran offensive line that should open up enough passing lanes for the ground game to gain traction and open up the play action for Eason who should have another big passing day.
