Jimmy Lake is ready to hit the ground running

BY MARK MOSCHETTI FOR GOHUSKIES MAGAZINE

lijah Molden thought he had a good idea of what to expect from Jimmy Lake. A two-way Oregon All-State player who helped West Linn High School win a state championship in 2016, he remembered Lake being “super friendly” during the recruiting process.

“He didn’t seem like he’d be the kind of coach who would lay into you a little bit,” recalls Molden, a defensive back now getting ready for his senior season at the University of Washington. It didn’t take long for him to discover otherwise. “My first practice, I figured out that wasn’t the case. He’s super-competitive,” Molden says. “I’d say he’s the most competitive person I’ve ever met. He has the most fiery spirit of anyone I’ve ever met.” Super-competitive. Fiery spirit. Whether it’s purple-clad players on the field or purple-adorned fans in the Husky Stadium stands, that’s a good idea of what to expect from Jimmy Lake. “Somewhere, I got struck with that competitive thing across my head – to my detriment sometimes,” the new UW head football coach says with a laugh, adding that he doesn’t like losing anywhere, whether to another team on the field, to a friend on the pool or Ping-Pong table, or even to his son in the Call of Duty video game. “It drives me to make sure our coaches and players are prepared so we can be ready for every game and every practice ahead,” Lake says. “It drives me to be prepared to make sure I’m putting everything into my job.”

The 43-year-old Lake already has been busy delivering on those supercompetitive, fiery-spirit attributes.

First, it was putting an exclamation point on his time as the Huskies’ defensive coordinator by helping shut down Boise State’s potent offense and giving Chris Petersen his final UW coaching victory in a 38-7 Las Vegas Bowl romp on Dec. 21.

Then, it was batting one-thousand on the recruiting trail, as the 23 players who verbally committed before Petersen announced his resignation on Dec. 2 each ultimately signed on the dotted line. Since then? “It’s slowing down a little bit. But, every day is something new and something that needs to get taken care of,” Lake says.

Make no mistake, though: Now that he’s the guy who has to get those things taken care of, he is relishing every moment.

“I thought five years, eight years from now, there would be a possibility, whether I was here or somewhere else, that whenever Chris decided to step away, I would have an opportunity,” he says. “But, no one told me that I was going to be the next head coach.”

No one, that is, until Huskies athletic director Jen Cohen gave him a call on Saturday, Nov. 30, the day after the 31-13 Apple Cup win against Washington State. That call pulled Lake away from a family Thanksgiving gathering in his home.

“I was just lounging around, watching football, watching with my family,” he says.

Only wife Michele had an inkling of what was happening, as Lake says she went to see what was going on when that phone call kept him upstairs for a while.

Their three children were told on Sunday evening, Dec. 1. The rest of the world found out the next day: First, the news that Petersen was stepping down — which virtually nobody saw coming — then, the announcement that Lake would be the new man at the helm following the bowl game.

“Obviously, it was a surprising moment,” Lake says. “But, at the same time, it was an exhilarating moment, knowing I was going to get to be a head football coach.”

He was going to be a head football coach. When he first got into the game, that was not on Jimmy Lake’s radar. His first job was as the secondary coach at his alma mater of Eastern Washington University from 2000-03. Then it was a year on Keith Gilbertson’s staff at Washington in 2004 as the defensive backs coach, and a year at Montana State in 2005.

“I wanted to become the best defensive backs coach in the country – that was my goal,” Lake says. “And, I made it all the way to the NFL.”

He had three stops at that level, all coaching DBs: Tampa Bay in 2006 and ’07, Detroit in 2008, then back to Tampa Bay in 2010 and ’11.

“After my second stint in the NFL, when the head coach was fired, the rest of the staff was fired, you felt like you had no control over that,” Lake says. “At that point, it was, ‘You know what? I do want to learn how to be a head coach.’ I had taken copious notes from Jon Gruden (in Tampa) and Rod Marinelli (Tampa and Detroit) and all these coaches I had been around.”

He took plenty of those notes during his eight seasons working with Petersen, as well, first at Boise State (2012 and ’13), and then with the Huskies, beginning in 2014.

Now, all of those notes, all of those conversations with his predecessors and mentors – from Cheney to Bozeman, Tampa to Detroit, Boise to Seattle – are there for Lake to draw upon as his dream of becoming a head coach becomes reality.

“I wasn’t going to take just any job,” he says. “I knew when that time came that I was going to take a head job, it was going to be a job that had resources, that we could recruit great coaches and great players and great staff so we could win championships. “Thankfully, it would be here.”

Like any athlete in any sport, Molden doesn’t necessarily like it when his coach will “lay into you a little bit.”

But, when that coach is Jimmy Lake, it’s a little easier to take it to heart. Beginning as a true freshman in 2017, Molden has seen action in every game, going from an off-the-bench player his first year to a regular starter, AllPac-12 First Teamer and Pro Football Focus All-America Second Teamer in 2019. “He just demands it,” Molden says of how Lake has gotten the best out of him – and all of the UW players under his tutelage. “It starts in the offseason, and goes through spring camp, fall camp.

“He has such a high level of expectation – and it’s always rising.” Defensive lineman Levi Onwuzurike, who, like Molden, will be heading into his senior season, feeds off another aspect of Lake’s coaching style.

“He’s an aggressive person – he always wants to take shots and blitz,” Onwuzurike says. “He’s always fired up. You make a play, and he goes crazy with us.”

Coming from a USA Today top-20 team at Allen (Texas) High School, where he was an honorable mention All-State player, Onwuzurike has made his share of plays for Lake – enough to earn All-Pac-12 First Team and Phil Steele All-America Honorable Mention this past season.

He has grown to enjoy the contrast between the on-field and the off-field sides of the Huskies’ new head man.

“On the field, he’s more assertive, and he likes to get stuff done,” he says. “But, he still laughs and jokes and likes having fun. He’s easy to approach and easy to talk to – and he always wants us to learn.”