Quoting Chris Petersen after Huskies’ 30-24 loss to California

(Opening) “Frustrating game. I thought our defense competed really, really hard. I don’t think you’re going to win many games in this league when you turn the ball over like we did. One thing, we need to tackle better, I thought the kids competed hard, especially on defense. They were swinging until the very end. Really proud of them for that. Frustrated on offense. Couldn’t hold the ball. They had the ball much longer than we did. Couldn’t convert third-downs, or fourth-down, and that needs to change.

(Adjustments after first two series?) “Not much. We had a bunch of stuff that we didn’t even get to the whole game. We just couldn’t get into a rhythm. Then late in the game you kind of get into a two-minute situation, so we’re going to try to play catch-up and really throw the ball. We always want to be able to run the ball a little bit, and we had a little bit of success doing that. When we get behind like that, we’re probably throwing it more than we’d like to. But again, I think it goes with a young offense where it’s a little bit of this, a little bit of that. I didn’t think, from the sideline anyway, we protected well enough. It’ll be interesting to see what Jake was seeing out there, if we missed a few things. We didn’t catch the ball well enough. So we’re all in this together.”

(What did you see from Jake Browning?) “Well, I don’t know. We’ve got to look at the tape there. He’s running out of there. I don’t know if he could have stepped up there. I’m anxious to go put that tape on. It’s never one guy. I’m sure there were some times he could have probably stepped up in there, and probably some times he couldn’t have. He was getting flushed a lot more than we had anticipated and I think we can be better at that.”

(Did you want to go to Dwayne Washington more?) “Yeah, absolutely. I think he was having some success running the ball. In general, we like to run the ball. I think we were running the ball better than we were throwing it, but we were playing catch-up the whole time, so that wasn’t ideal. I think the first half, we had the ball 26 plays, 27 plays, something like that. And then at the end of the game, it was like 40 to 20 time of possession. Turning the ball over, missing that many tackles, getting beat that bad in time of possession – that’s a recipe for disaster.”

(Get a look at the Littleton/Goff review?) “I couldn’t tell.”

(What worked well on the touchdown drive that was all Dwayne Washington?) “I think the question more so is, why weren’t the other drives working like that? And we’ll have to go put that tape on, because at times, we made it look so easy, and we know it’s not going to be that easy all the time, but it needs to be easier than it was that whole game, where we were kind of stumbling all over ourselves way too much. Really, really frustrating, four turnovers, put our defense in that situation, bad field position a lot of times. And those guys, they keep swinging, keep battling. That’s hard to keep playing that hard when we’re not doing a whole lot on offense. And they create a turnover and score themselves, and get everybody excited, and we’ve got to get more done on offense.”

(On missed tackles) “I saw a couple times that we definitely need to wrap up. In fact, I was shocked that a couple of our guys just took shots without wrapping up. A couple of our good, experienced guys. That was really disappointing. I think it goes back a little bit to the spread concept, spreading you out, creating space. And those backs ran hard. We knew that they would run hard. I think at least half the credit goes to those guys, because they do it every game. They get those big splits, create 1-on-1 matchups, and they run through them. I did see some lack of wrapping up there that’s disappointing. You see what happens if we don’t wrap up, especially with backs like that.”

(Cal do anything to surprise you defensively?) “Nope. Played their base defense. And so that was credit to them. They’re feeling good about themselves on that.”

(On lack of pass protection) “I’d need to put the tape on. I don’t know. I think there’s some pressure there that he might have had to get out of it, maybe he could step up. So I don’t know. Playing three freshmen on the o-line. That’s going to be a hard combination.”

(Do you practice scrambling?) “Absolutely. We practice it every day. Practice scrambling drill every day. So we’ll look at that, see if receivers are breaking their routes off correctly. … Scrambling can be a really good thing, as we know. A scrambling quarterback can break a defense’s back – you’ve got everything covered, and they break routes off and away you go. (Jared) Goff hurt us bad scrambling on a big first down. And Jake got a nice one where we threw it to Dante (Pettis) as well, made a really good catch. Made a nice run today. But he’s scrambling too much. (Either) he needs to stay in there or our protection needs to tighten up. It’s too much scrambling for what we’re about.”

(On missing Budda Baker) “I think you’re going to always miss Budda. I think he’s a really good player. But again, I think our guys played hard on defense. I think those guys did a great job against a very prolific pass offense, real good receivers. Quarterback can sling it, as we know. But Budda’s one of our better guys and we’re always going to miss him in a lot of ways.”

(On finding out of the team is resilient) “Yeah, and it’s not going to get any easier, and we know that. Everybody’s good in this league. You have a new challenge and that’s the hard thing having a young team – the scheme’s going to be different the next time we play. So you try to – you’d like to be able to repeat this gameplan and get it right, but it’s not really that simple. But these guys will come back. Way too early in the season. And it’s going to be a hard, slugging season. I mean look at the teams we play. So those kids know that. That’s why, last week I talked about the same thing, it’s just still about us. We’ve got to go back and tackle better. We’ve got to go back and pass-pro better. We’ve got to go back and set our feet and put the ball on our receivers. We’ve got to not fumble the ball. It’s all things that we can control, a lot of this stuff.”

(On the missed wheel route to Dwayne Washington) “Right there, we would have had a chance to tie it. … Not any one throw is going to win the game, not any one throw for the most part is going to lose the game, it isn’t. But I know (we) want that one back.”

(On UW’s defense getting pressure on Goff) “I thought they did a nice job. Coach K(wiatkowski) called a good game. That’s hard. We were bringing some zone pressure and they picked it up OK, and if you don’t get to him in a hurry, he’s going to find the seams. And you saw that. So I thought he mixed it up good. I thought our guys played hard. Got to him about five times – I think we got to him more than that, but we sacked him five times, which I think is pretty good, how those guys throw it.”

(Bye come at a good time?) “I think when you play like this on offense, I don’t think you want a bye. I think you want to go play again, get a chance to redeem yourself. But it is what it is. So we’ll use the extra practice time and get a couple guys healed up and work on some fundamentals, hang onto the ball, work on tackling and try to improve the things we’re talking about right here.”

This story was originally published September 26, 2015 at 8:36 PM with the headline "Quoting Chris Petersen after Huskies’ 30-24 loss to California."