I was going over the roster the day Tyrone Willingham was hired and realized that he had a very difficult job on his hands. It was going to take anyone four to five years to clean up this mess. The logistics were also difficult because he had so few seniors graduating before his first season.
His first class was destined to be tiny, and it was going to take a few years to clear the deadwood out of the program. Weak classes and stunted development brought on by coaching changes had brought the program to its knees. The only answer to getting it turned around was to recruit well over the next four years and weed out as many of the non-productive players as possible.
The first two years were absolutely crucial: The new coach not only had to be successful getting some contributors in, he also had to deal with the lack of balance that had been created by his predecessors.
When Steve Spurrier took over at South Carolina, the first thing he did was look at film and start pulling scholarships. The initial reaction wasn't pretty, but after about six weeks people forgot about it.
Willingham, on the other hand, decided the best way to handle it was to graduate players early who were not contributing to make room for new recruits. The process was slower, but it allowed Willingham to prune the roster without totally screwing kids who were trying to earn a degree at UW.
Willingham's plan had legs, but it would only work if he didn't have many misses in his first two classes. Willingham's first class was one he couldn't miss on if he wanted to be successful long term at Washington.
Even though it was tiny, there were a couple of jewels in the in-state class he had to have. He didn't get them, and this class may go down as being the worst in Washington history for various reasons.
Only six players remain from that first class. The bleeding started immediately when three JC defensive backs were unable to qualify that fall. The loss of those three defensive backs crippled the 2005 defense, which simply ran out of players in the defensive backfield.
The criticism Willingham gets on this class is that he didn't hit the ground recruiting when he was initially hired. He waited until January to get started. Most of us gave him a mulligan at the time, but in hindsight no mulligan was deserved.
The two players that were in state-must haves that season, RB Jonathan Stewart and LB Anthony Felder, chose Oregon and California respectively. Willingham did end up with the next two best in E.J. Savannah and J.R. Hasty, but we already know the end of that unfortunate story.
The six players who remain are all solid contributors who play or start each week. The problem is that there simply aren't enough of them. UW will only have five players left from the class in 2009.
- DE Daniel Te'o-Nesheim, Jr
- DE Darion Jones, Jr
- P Ryan Perkins, Jr
- LB Chris Stevens, Sr
- OT Ben Ossai, Jr
- OG Morgan Rosborough, Jr
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