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Washington in crisis: Did Jimmy Lake just cool off Clay Helton's hot seat?

We at Trojans Wire did not expect — not in our wildest dreams — to talk about a full-blown crisis at the University of Washington football program on Labor Day Sunday. Jimmy Lake is in more trouble than Clay Helton right now.

Maybe later in the season, we might have envisioned doing a critical examination of Washington’s coaching situation, but not in Week 1. Not BEFORE the Michigan game which will be played this upcoming Saturday.

Yet, that’s where we are, and there is SO much to unpack about this story, created by an unfathomable 13-7 home-field loss to Montana, in which the Huskies scored on their first (scripted) drive and then got SHUT OUT THE REST OF THE GAME.

BY MONTANA.

AT HOME.

It’s the worst loss in U-Dub football history, and I don’t think that’s a particularly tough call, either.

Because this story owns so many dimensions, we’re going to slowly unpack it. We’re not going to dump all of it on you in one shot. We’re going to peel this onion bit by bit while Washington fans cry — and yell, and rage — in disbelief at what their program has been reduced to in a few short years after Chris Petersen stepped down.

We have to start with this point, which is connected (indirectly) to USC: Did Jimmy Lake just cool off Clay Helton’s hot seat? It’s not a ridiculous question by any means.

Let’s lay out the landscape: Maybe Washington and the rest of the North Division will get better… but what if improvement over the course of 2021 is minimal at best, nonexistent at worst? What if Washington goes 6-6 with a team many people (not us!) thought would be 10-2 or 9-3?

(I’m glad I picked Washington to be 8-4 in the preseason — receipts are here — and yet I might have still OVERRATED the Huskies. That’s a scary thought.)

If Washington goes 6-6 with a lot of Petersen holdovers, with recruiting already going in the tank and Oregon now flipping former U-Dub commits, that’s a total trainwreck on Montlake:

On this point, there is no doubt: Jimmy Lake currently has the hottest seat among all Pac-12 head coaches — maybe not by a large margin, but it’s true.

USC has kept Clay Helton far longer than his results have warranted. Washington AD Jen Cohen hasn’t had to face this kind of quick-trigger firing decision in her tenure. She became AD when Chris Petersen was already the coach. We know USC has been lenient with Helton; we don’t know if U-Dub will cut Lake some slack. On that basis alone, it seems entirely fair to put Lake on the hotter seat.

The follow-up question: Does that mean Helton’s seat is cooler?

Here’s the reasoning: If Washington does plummet and the North becomes Oregon And The 5 Dwarfs, all while the South becomes a ferocious four-way battle among USC, Utah, ASU, and a good-looking UCLA team which just whacked LSU, Mike Bohn could easily rationalize that USC is competitive in the Pac-12’s tougher division (which the South hasn’t been since 2014) and can take the next step with its hefty recruiting class, by far the best among Pac-12 South programs.

Bohn (maybe president Carol Folt as well) might look at the Washington implosion and say, “See, THAT is what a messed-up situation looks like! We’re fine over here!”

Yes, I know what you’re thinking: Just because Washington might go 6-6 doesn’t mean it’s acceptable for USC to go 9-3. YOU’RE RIGHT. I AGREE WITH YOU.

But, I’m trying to game this out, and I can easily see a scenario in which USC administrators use the Washington situation (if it remains as bad as it currently is) to keep Helton another year. It could give Helton political cover.

I’m not saying it SHOULD, but it COULD.

We’ll have much more on this story and how it relates to USC. Keep tabs on Trojans Wire and its Pac-12 coverage.

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