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Weekend Debate - How Many Wins Do You Expect in 2012?

By Qsjfeyioljnbvdetui
July 24, 2012; Los Angeles, CA, USA; University of Washington Huskies quarterback Keith Price (left) and corner back Desmond Trufant during PAC-12 Media Day at Universal Studios Hollywood. Mandatory Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-US PRESSWIRE
July 24, 2012; Los Angeles, CA, USA; University of Washington Huskies quarterback Keith Price (left) and corner back Desmond Trufant during PAC-12 Media Day at Universal Studios Hollywood. Mandatory Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-US PRESSWIRE

Results from last week: As I expected, just like the Stanford defense, nobody could stop Marques Tuiasosopo. Tuiasosopo collected 71% of the votes, nobody else in the field even broke 10%. It shouldn't be a surprise, with all the great quarterbacks in the history of college football, none of them have accomplished the feat that Tui did!

This Weekend's Debate: How many wins do you expect in 2012? With football practices just around the corner, it's time to debate what we, the Husky fans, expect out of our beloved Dawgs this season. To clarify, this isn't what you hope the Huskies will do, what you want the Huskies to do, but what do you really expect out of the team this season? Before deciding on a number of wins that I expected for the season, I had to break the season down into four categories. Below are my expectations for the offense, defense, special teams and how it translates to the schedule.

Offense: The offense took some hits this off season, losing Chris Polk, Senio Kelemete, Jermaine Kearse and Devin Aguilar. The good news is Keith Price returns for his second season as the starting QB, ASJ and Kasen Williams will be taking over as his premier targets and Jessie Callier and Bishop Sankey should treat us to a quality 1 - 2 punch at running back. The big question will be the offensive line. Last year the line had some good moments, but wasn't anything to get excited about. This season, the biggest question is can we find tackles to protect Price. Even though we lost some great talent on offense, I think the up and coming talent is better, but younger. The question that will be answered this season is can a younger, but more talented offense, perform as good or better than last season? I expect the offense to perform on a very similar level to 2011.

Defense: The defense line took a hit losing Alameda Ta'amu, but we return just about everyone else. I have rather vocal about my belief that there is a lot more talent on the defense than people think and that the players were under performing. With a new coaching staff, focused on developing the talent on hand, I expect to see names like Crichton and Potoa'e reinsert themselves into the competition for playing time. The d-line has plenty of young talent, the linebackers and still young, but talented, and the secondary could be something special. No matter how you slice it, this defense is going to be significantly improved from last season. The fun part is thinking how good this team could be if the defense really comes together!

Special Teams: Losing Folk and Rasp is going to hurt, I don't have high expectations for whoever wins the kicking and punting duties, but I do expect them to be serviceable. The good news is that we have a bunch of young, explosive players battling to return the kickoffs and punts. We have players who are much faster and more explosive than we've had in the past few years. Watching our return teams should be rather exciting in 2012.

The Schedule: We've discussed it at length, it will be a tough road, but a few wins early could really set up a special season. My expectations are for a 7 to 8 wins in 2012, this is my guess at how it will happen:

  1. SDSU - Win
  2. @ LSU - Lose
  3. Portland State - Win
  4. Stanford - Lose
  5. @ Oregon - Win
  6. USC - Lose
  7. @ Arizona - Win
  8. Oregon State - Win
  9. @ Cal - Win
  10. Utah - Win
  11. @ Colorado - Win
  12. @ WSU - Lose
Yep, you see it right, I expect us to lose to Stanford and beat Oregon. Stanford players still have tree trunks for legs, I see us getting pushed around yet again. But, I expect Wilcox to put together a faster more aggressive defense that will slow the Ducks enough for Keith Price to lead us to victory. Yes, I picked WSU to beat us in Pullman. We've had a nice run against them, but Leach and his passing attack scare me. Hopefully there will be a massive snow storm, making it impossible to pass the ball and it will turn into a ground game. As I see it, 2012 will be another season of incremental improvement, which is all I ask. More games where we are in it to the end (less blowouts), and a better defense, will make for a happy pilot.

Let's hear it Dawg fans, how many wins do you expect in 2012?

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