Another Huard at UW
SEATTLE – Tim Lappano is seeing a lot more of his offense this fall than he has in years past.
Washington’s offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach, Lappano is used to spending almost all of his practice time with the quarterbacks. Now, thanks to a new addition to the staff – one with a familiar last name – Lappano has the freedom to occasionally leave his quarterbacks in capable hands.
“I’ve got help now,” he said. “I’ve got a GA that can help do the individual stuff with the quarterbacks.”
That GA would be graduate assistant Luke Huard, who is in his first year of coaching college football. Before coming to Washington, Huard coached at the high school level, including four years as the head coach at Bellevue’s Interlake High.
Huard is the younger brother of former Husky quarterbacks Brock and Damon. The youngest quarterbacking Huard, the Gatorade state player of the year as a senior at Puyallup, elected not to follow his brothers to Washington, instead going to North Carolina.
Now, eight years after he chose the Tar Heels over the Huskies, Huard is wearing purple.
Huard has many roles as a graduate assistant, not the least of which is affording Lappano a chance to branch out.
“Because you do feel that he has the knowledge that you can also put the whole group in his hands at certain times and know that nothing will be missing, that allows [Lappano] as a coordinator to kind of spread himself around and ensure that things are going in the direction that we would like them to go,” said Washington coach Tyrone Willingham.
Huard’s other big role? Playing the part of nice guy to Lappano’s tough guy.
“It’s tough love with me,” said Lappano. “He’s good for those kids. They can get over there when they know they don’t want to be around me.”
Huard says Lappano isn’t as bad as he makes himself out to be, and adds that he has been around coaches who yell much more than Lappano. Still, he’s happy with the role each plays.
“It’s not anything we actually sat down and discussed, it just kind of works out that way,” Huard said.
The quarterbacks, like Huard, say Lappano’s “tough love” isn’t a bad thing. Even so, they seem to be enjoying the addition to the coaching staff.
“Sometimes Coach Lappano might get on us, but I think that’s good for anybody to sometimes get jumped on and be reminded when you’re doing something wrong,” said Locker. “It’s not a negative thing, we all know that coach Lappano cares about us. If he stops yelling at us, I think that’s when we need to start worrying because then he doesn’t care about us any more. But it is nice to have Coach Huard there to calm us down a little bit sometimes.”