{"id":76761,"date":"2025-08-27T10:30:16","date_gmt":"2025-08-27T14:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/?p=76761"},"modified":"2025-09-16T21:38:35","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T01:38:35","slug":"walters-dougherty-discuss-week-one-preparation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/2025\/08\/27\/walters-dougherty-discuss-week-one-preparation\/","title":{"rendered":"Walters, Dougherty Discuss Week One Preparation"},"content":{"rendered":"
On Tuesday afternoon, Washington coordinators Ryan Walters and Jimmie Dougherty each spoke about how they prepare for the first week of the college football season. Preparation is a little different than a typical week because there’s limited tape on the opponent. The season hasn’t begun, teams are new, personnel are new, and there\u2019s a lot of unknown on the opposing side of the football. As such, Walters and Dougherty shared their perspectives on how they create an edge for week one of a new season.<\/div>\n

UW Coordinators Break Down Week One<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Ryan Walters’ Week One Preparation<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\u201cYou watch every play from a year ago,\u201d Walters said on Tuesday. \u201cSo it\u2019s a ton of film.\u201d The Husky defensive coordinator is tasked with preparing for Jay Norvell\u2019s Colorado State Rams, led by third-year starting quarterback Brayden Fowler-Nicolosi<\/a>. However, Walters and Norvell have a coaching history together at Oklahoma in 2012. Norvell served as the co-offensive coordinator and wide receivers coach that season, and Walters was a graduate assistant in his fourth year of coaching. \u201cI know Jay really well,\u201d Walters said. \u201cI know the type of coach he is, his football IQ, and his background.\u201d<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
In terms of preparation, Walters described how he keys in on certain aspects of the Rams’ offense from last year in an effort to diagnose tendencies. \u201cThey stayed pretty consistent last year, just in terms of their style of play week to week\u2026 You look at some of the scenarios a year ago to try and get a better understanding of what they want to do situational-wise.\u201d But no matter the quantity of film study, there will always be an unknown that comes along with a new season.<\/div>\n
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\u201cWe gotta be prepared for the unknown and embrace it. It is game one, and there are new guys on the roster that will be featured,\u201d Walters said. \u201cI\u2019m sure they\u2019ll have some wrinkles that we\u2019ve gotta communicate, talk, and adjust. There will be a lot of in-game adjustments, I would imagine. But just telling our guys to over-communicate and stick to our rules, and they should be able to play against anybody and against any formation or route concept or run play type that we\u2019re going to see. I think if we do that, then we\u2019ll have success.\u201d<\/div>\n

Jimmie Dougherty\u2019s Perspective<\/strong><\/h3>\n

On the other side of the football, Dougherty has a similar task. But the Rams hired a new defensive coordinator in Tyson Summers this offseason, creating another hoop to jump through in terms of preparation. \u201cIt is a challenge because they\u2019ve got a DC that\u2019s coming from a different school,\u201d Dougherty said. \u201cAnd they only have one returning starter back.\u201d That returner is defensive end Mukendi Wa-Kalonji<\/a>, who started all 13 games for the Rams last year and has 37 total games of experience.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou go back and you know what the defensive coordinator has done at different places,\u201d Dougherty continued. \u201cYou kind of study his history.\u201d Summers was most recently the defensive coordinator and safeties coach at Western Kentucky from 2022 to 2024. His unit allowed an average of 25.5 points per game during his tenure there. Summers was a defensive assistant at Florida in 2021. He spent a few years at Colorado prior to that in a coaching career that began in 2002.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\u201cThe one thing I’ll say about anywhere [Summers] has been is guys have played hard for him,” Dougherty said. “They\u2019re gonna be a crew that’s going to come in and try to create a bunch of havoc, and we gotta prepare for everything that they might show, all the multiple looks.\u201d The Rams also added a couple of linebacker transfers. Baylor transfer JaQues Evans<\/a>and Iowa State transfer Jacob Ellis<\/a> are expected to be impactful on the defense this season. From Dougherty\u2019s perspective and in terms of game planning, there are a lot of different pieces to study that form the new Rams defense.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Main Photo: Nick Lemkau Last Word on College Football<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Tuesday afternoon, Washington coordinators Ryan Walters and Jimmie Dougherty each spoke about how they prepare for the first week of the college football season. Preparation is a little different than a typical week because there’s limited tape on the opponent. The season hasn’t begun, teams are new, personnel are new, and there\u2019s a lot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3944,"featured_media":76764,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,2,17,35612],"tags":[35480,79,3498,2721,10272,199,509],"class_list":["post-76761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bigten","category-featured","category-news","category-washington-huskies","tag-bryaden-fowler-nicolosi","tag-college-football","tag-jay-norvell","tag-jimmie-dougherty","tag-ryan-walters","tag-tyson-summers","tag-washington-huskies"],"modified_by":"Michael Kovacs, ADMIN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3944"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76761"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76761\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76765,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76761\/revisions\/76765"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}