SEATTLE -- For just a few minutes on Sunday, Washington coach Chris Petersen let his guard down.
He joked about the TV selection special taking too long to announce his Huskies as the No. 4 seed in the College Football Playoff, saying the graphics department needed to hurry up already. He jokingly sniped that he has not been one of those fans with the “We Want Bama” signs. And he considered a local football team as a potentially apt practice opponent as the Huskies prepare for No. 1 Alabama in the College Football Playoff semifinal at the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl.
“Fortunately the Seahawks are in town,” Petersen said. “Maybe they’ll scrimmage us to get us ready for those guys.”
But beneath all of Petersen’s jokes and smiles, there was a resoundingly honest response: This Alabama football team will be the best team -- by a long shot -- the Huskies have faced this year and, like the graphics department, Petersen and his staff must hurry up in getting ready to face this team in Atlanta. Precious moments cannot be squandered as Washington has gone from wanting Bama to facing Bama.
Ten minutes after the announcement, it was clear that Petersen’s wheels were already turning.
He explained that Washington’s first order of business Sunday was hosting its year-end banquet at Husky Stadium. Then, Petersen explained, the players would have the week off to prepare for exams, which begin next week. The team will practice once this weekend and lift weights intermittently.
And Petersen?
He’ll be off furiously preparing for a team that decimated its only Pac-12 opponent of the season when it crushed USC in the season opener, 52-6.
“He’s laser focused,” offensive guard Jake Eldrenkamp said. “He’s just … I don’t know how to put words to it, honestly.”
“He’s locked in and always trying to tweak the game plan on anything,” running back Myles Gaskin said. “Just trying to give us the best opportunity to win games.”
But even without any kind of laser focus, there’s plenty that Petersen likely knows about this Alabama team.
Such as the Crimson Tide have scored an FBS-leading 14 non-offensive touchdowns this season (10 defensive, four special teams), scoring 123 points off opponent turnovers.
Or that Alabama’s defense is giving up just 2.0 yards per rush this season, the best single-season average by any Power 5 team in a decade. Or that freshman quarterback Jalen Hurts has been a welcomed departure from the normal for Alabama coach Nick Saban as offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin’s spread offense has infiltrated the Tide.
This play and level of competition will be new a new challenge for Petersen’s laser focus over the next month.
And though there is some common thread from Petersen to Alabama (he’s the only two-time winner of the Bear Bryant Award, named for longtime Alabama football coach Paul “Bear” Bryant) and Saban to Washington (he credits former Washington coach and late Husky legend Don James for getting him into the business as a graduate assistant at Kent State), the piece these two seem to share the most is a mutual level of respect for what one another has done at his program.
As the two coaches closed up their Peach Bowl teleconference on Sunday afternoon, Saban chimed in when the moderator asked for more questions.
“Can I make a comment?” he asked.
Saban congratulated Petersen on the season and the Huskies’ playoff selection, saying he respected what they had done in 2016.
“Appreciate that,” Petersen said. “And I thought the same thing [about Alabama] until we got matched up. And I actually had to now, all of a sudden, have to deal with this.”
It, again, came with that familiar laugh and undertone of honesty.
But with one of the biggest challenges of his coaching careers on the biggest stage on which he has ever stepped, it’s safe to say that there won’t be too many more jokes or time to let any guard down.
Because now it doesn’t matter whether or not the Huskies have actually wanted Bama all along, all that matters now is that what they’ve got next … Bama.