Report: Washington football will fire head coach Jimmy Lake

The Washington Huskies plan to fire head coach Jimmy Lake without cause, according to Yahoo’s Pete Thamel. The relationship between coach and school quickly deteriorated this season, following poor results and several media distractions. Washington will pay his buyout, not pursuing a for-cause split.

Lake took over the Washington program after six seasons as an assistant. He was tabbed Chris Peterson’s replacement in 2020, two years after agreeing to move from defensive back coach to defensive coordinator with veteran staff member Pete Kwiatkowski. His quick rise through the program led many to believe he was destined for success.

Sunday’s news comes just a day after new accusations arrived of Lake physically assaulting a player. The report describes the Washington head coach pushing wide receiver Quinten Pounds up against wooden lockers in the locker room on Oct. 12, 2019, according to five eyewitnesses. The alleged altercation occurred during a game against Arizona in Tucson while Lake was the defensive coordinator for the Huskies.

After an encouraging 3-0 start in 2020, the Huskies finished the season with a home loss against Stanford. With high expectations in year two, Washington tanked with a 4-5 record through 10 weeks, bringing Lake’s overall record to 7-6.

Organization concern rose over recent weeks after controversial media comments and a sideline incident brought negative attention to the program.

Sideline incident

Washington athletic director Jen Cohen released a statement after Huskies head football coach Jimmy Lake was seen having a sideline altercation with one of his players during Saturday night’s game against No. 4 Oregon.

“We are aware of an interaction between Head Coach Jimmy Lake and a student-athlete during the first half of Saturday’s game,” Cohen’s statement read, according to a tweet posted by Christian Caple of The Athletic. “We have high expectations of the conduct of our coaches and we are working to gather more information on this matter.”

In the video of the altercation, Lake can be seen hitting redshirt freshman linebacker Ruperake Fuavai in the helmet. He then shoves him after Fuavai got into it with Oregon senior wide receiver Jaylon Redd following a play.

Controversial comments

During his Monday press conference previewing Washington’s meeting with Oregon, Jimmy Lake was asked if Oregon is a recruiting rival. Instead of answering the question with a simple answer, he went on offense. Lake views Washington’s recruiting rivals as schools with high “academic prowess.”

“That is way more pumped up than it is,” Lake said. “Our battles are really the schools we go against – that have academic prowess – like the University of Washington, Notre Dame, Stanford, USC. We go with a lot of battles, toe to toe, all the way to the end, with those schools. So I think that’s made up and pumped up in [the media’s] world. In our world, we battle more academically prowess teams.”