Five Husky Takeaways From The Hawaii Game

1. There are basically two ways you can look at the game. One is that a new coaching staff took it's backup quarterback on the road to a place that can be notoriously difficult to play and escaped with a victory. The other is that the Huskies despite a talent advantage across the board -- which is pretty vast in many cases -- seemed out played and out coached for nearly the entirety of the game, and if a couple of plays and penalties had gone the other way would have gotten blown out completely. In either case, they need to do some soul searching and figure a lot of things out from week one to week two.

2. Pete Kwiatkowsi and Jimmy Lake took some heat for the way they called the coverage, but it really wasn't a whole lot different that what we saw from the Husky defense a year ago. The tried to keet everything underneath and not allow the big play, and the excelled at doing that. They were aggressive at times, and more than the young defensive backs, I saw a lot of the linebackers not covering hard enough within their zones. The secondary played really well, but we'll see how that translates when they get tested by a quarterback who can challenge them deep this week in Vernon Adams of Eastern Washington.

3. Matchup-wise, Joey Iosefa is brutal for the Husky defense. The Huskies still don't have a defensive end who is anything more than average stopping the run -- which is going to haunt them all year -- and their linebackers are built more to defend the many spread attacks of the Pac-12 than a big bruising back like Iosefa. It doesn't excuse the timidity with which they attacked their run fits, however.

4. The biggest issue I had with the playcalling was that in the first half it was broken down and simplified for Jeff Lindquist, and he did pretty well with it. There was a lot of play action and moving the pocket to simplify his reads; instead of having to do more complex full field combination reads, he was doing more reading just half of the field, and hit some nice passes doing so. But in the second half, Jonathan Smith turned him into more of a straight drop back passer, and the results were somewhat predictable.

5. The clamoring for Cyler Miles has begun, and rightly so. comparing the one start each of Washington's sophomore QB's has made, Miles displayed more poise, control, accuracy and decision making. It would shock everybody if he did not suit up as the starter for every game he's healthy from here on out.