Vicki and I are personally witnessed the “ups and downs” of Jimmy lake’s brief tenure as the football coach at the University of Washington. We shared an elevator ride with him. You could say we saw this all coming down on several levels.
You groan. It’s true, though. We did really ride the elevator with the embattled coach before the UCLA game on October 16. Only, he didn’t look like a coach in trouble. Far from it.
We had just been to the “off leash” deck at Husky Stadium to share a beer. We were about to take the stairs down to the main concourse to go to our seat when an elevator door opened up. It was an elevator operator and a nattily-dressed man who looked a lot like Jimmy Lake. Turns out it was Jimmy Lake, and he motioned for us to join him.
I exclaimed “It’s Coach Montlake!,” only then to think to myself, “uh, that was a really dumb thing to say.” We greeted each other and made small talk about the game. He said he’d been upstairs entertaining recruits, and was on his way down to the locker room. He did not look like a coach on the hot seat. He was gracious. He seemed jovial and care free. No “game face” here. I couldn’t have imagined a Don James or Chris Petersen looking this chill less than an hour before kickoff of an important conference game. When it was our turn to get off, we wished him luck. He said it was nice to meet us, and left us with a parting shot of “Go Dawgs!”
The Dawgs would go on to lose the game to UCLA, 24-17. Less than a month later, Lake would be fired.
After consecutive road victories over Arizona and Stanford to end the month of October, even the harshest of Lake’s critics believed the second-year coach would be given at least a third season. Then came the lack of “academic prowress” barbs aimed at Oregon leading up to the rivalry game, and finally the unsightly scene on the sidelines during the game in which Lake went after one of his players in an effort to separate him from an Oregon player who we learned later had spit in the UW player’s face.
I didn’t want to see this happen. Even the athletic director who fired him didn’t want to see this happen.
“No one wanted Jimmy to succeed more than I when I hired him in 2019,” said UW’s Jen Cohen in a prepared statement this past Sunday (November 14). “But ultimately, this change is necessary for a variety of reasons, both on the field and off.”
Unfortunately – and it’s really hard to write this – the dismissal of Lake had to happen. Whatever he was doing wasn’t working.
Jimmy Lake was a great position coach. He recruited and developed so many defensive backs for the NFL that UW has been dubbed “DBU.” The list includes Budda Baker, Kevin King, Byron Murphy, Taylor Rapp, Elijah Molden, Sydney Jones and Jordan Miller.
It was a big step for Lake to go from defensive backs to coach to defensive coordinator, a job he shared for one season with Pete Kwiatkowski, who graciously agreed to accommodate Lake. Some would say the Huskies’ defense regressed a little under Lake.
But it was an even greater leap to then go all the way to head coach. Jimmy Lake was no Chris Petersen. In Petersen’s seven seasons at Washington he never once disparaged an opponent leading up to the game, much less lose control during a game and strike one of his players. There’s a lot more to being a head coach than many people probably realize. Having a sense of social awareness and dealing with the media are just a few.
For me, Lake’s message didn’t line up with the results, or even reality.
When he took the microphone at halftime of a UW basketball game in January 2020 shortly after being named coach and said UW “will continue to dominate the West Coast in football,” that statement just wasn’t true. Oregon two months earlier had beaten Washington for the second time in four seasons – and the 14th time in 16 seasons – and had just won the Rose Bowl. Washington is the last Pac-12 team to go to college football’s final four playoffs, but it hasn’t dominated West Coast football since James was coach.
Entering the 2021 season, Lake said the team’s strength was its offensive line, which he claimed was not only the best in the Pac-12, but one of the best in the country. Instead, in the season opener, the O-line got pushed around by FCS school Montana. UW’s rushing offense ranks 10th in the conference, just one of the reasons for its disappointing 4-6 record.
When Lake said Oregon is not a recruiting rival because UW went head-to-head with schools with more “academic prowress” like Stanford, Notre Dame and USC, that also wasn’t true. Oregon over the summer “flipped” two previous UW commits – defensive linemen Sir Mells of Las Vegas and Ben Roberts of Salt Lake City – in the Class of 2022. The two schools go after a lot of the same players, and lately, Oregon has gotten the majority of them.
What happened to this rising star of a coach? A source close to the program said at one point “Jimmy stopped being Jimmy. He became cocky, arrogant and stubborn.” He had a mentor in Petersen. The former UW coach meets weekly with coaches at the school. But it’s been said Lake, perhaps wanting to escape the shadow of his former boss, didn’t talk to him after being named head coach. Lake’s hiring of offensive coordinator John Donovan in 2020 was widely panned as a reach from the start. Lake has shown his stubbornness by continuing to defend Donovan while the offense struggled. Donovan was finally let go after the Oregon game, perhaps at Cohen’s insistence.
For all of Lake’s failures, it’s the face plant in recruiting that to me is the most puzzling. When Petersen stepped down in 2019, many thought UW recruiting would actually get a boost from the effervescent Lake. Under the Petersen regime, UW recruiting classes were consistently in the top 15 nationally and first or second in the Pac-12. Still, there was a sense UW could do even better. But in the latest 247sports.com rankings for the 2022 class, Washington’s ranks a lowly 53rd nationally. By contrast, Oregon’s class is ranked No. 9 in the nation. Either recruits aren’t buying the message Lake is delivering, or Lake and his staff aren’t doing the hard work on the recruiting trail that is necessary to build a championship contender.
My hunch is Lake and his staff haven’t made recruiting a top priority. Lake at times has minimized recruiting, saying UW prides itself on “developing talent.” Mario Cristobal and his staff at Oregon, on the other hand, are relentless recruiters. Most coaches would rather draw Xs and Os and teach football. Recruiting requires an almost 24-7 mentality. It never stops. Ask Petersen, who in his final years at UW grew weary of the recruiting grind. But he did it.
If you want to be a national championship contender, you better keep the top local talent home. Washington in its first year under Lake had a golden opportunity to harvest one of the richest bumper crops of high-school talent in state history.
But several of the biggest names went elsewhere. The most notable in-state senior defectors – five-star defensive lineman J.T. Tuimoloau of Eastside Catholic and five-star wide receiver Emeka Egbuka of Steilacoom – went to Ohio State.
247Sports.com state rankings: Class of 2021
| Rank | Player | Position | High School (City) | College |
| 1. | J.T. Tuimolau | DL | Eastside Catholic (Sammamish) | Ohio State |
| 2. | Emeka Egbuka | WR | Steilacoom | Ohio State |
| 3. | Sam Huard | QB | Kennedy Catholic (Burien) | Washington |
| 4. | Owen Prentice | OL | O’Dea (Seattle) | Washington |
| 5. | Julien Simon | LB | Lincoln (Tacoma) | USC |
| 6. | Clay Millen | QB | Mount Si (Snoqualmie) | Nevada |
| 7. | Junior Alexander | WR | Kennedy Catholic (Burien) | Arizona State |
| 8. | Jabez Tinae | WR | Kennedy Catholic (Burien) | Washington |
| 9. | Jacob Schuster | DL | Tumwater (Olympia) | Minnesota |
| 10. | Josh McCarron | Edge | Archbishop Murphy (Everett) | Virginia Tech |
| 11. | Will Latu* | Ath | Bethel (Spanaway) | Washington |
The class of 2022 looks even less promising for Washington. The prize of the in-state crop – five-star offensive lineman Josh Conerly, Jr. of Rainier Beach High – is expected to sign with Michigan.
247Sports.com state rankings: Class of 2022
| Rank | Player | Position | High School (City) | College (verbal) |
| 1. | Josh Conerly, Jr. | OL | Rainier Beach (Seattle) | Uncommitted |
| 2. | Tobias Merriweather | WR | Union (Camas) | Notre Dame |
| 3. | Ryan Otton | TE | Tumwater (Olympia) | Washington |
| 4. | Tristan Dunn | S | Sumner | Arizona State |
| 5. | Dishawn Misa | LB | Eastside Catholic (Sammamish) | Boise State |
| 6. | Dave Iuli | OL | Puyallup | Oregon |
| 7. | Malik Agbo | OT | Todd Beamer (Federal Way) | LSU |
| 8. | Vega Ioane | OL | Graham-Kapowsin (Graham) | Washington |
| 9. | Jack Velling | TE | Seattle Prep | Oregon State |
| 10. | Mark Nabou | OL | O’Dea (Seattle) | Uncommitted |
| 11. | Hudson Cedarland | LB | Gig Harbor | Washington State |
| 12. | Luke Vincic | OT | Bothell | Oregon State |
| 13. | Djouvensky Schlenbaker | RB | Squalicum (Bellingham) | Washington State |
| 14. | Austin Terry | TE | Tumwater (Olympia) | Boise State |
| 15. | Andrew Savaiinaea | DL | Graham-Kapowsin (Graham) | Oregon |
That just isn’t going to cut it at Washington. The word during the season was Cohen “was furious” with the football team’s struggles. Lake’s missteps leading up to the Oregon game and the sideline incident left her little choice but to bring an end to the Lake Show.
I really wish the man we shared the elevator with could have enjoyed a long ride as Washington’s football coach. The pitfalls he encountered – like choosing to take easy elevator rides – I wish he would have taken the steps to avoid them.
The Inside Scoop 