Huskies have lost a margin for error

Many fans might have reached a breaking point with Washington's 48-41 defeat Saturday against Arizona. But Huskies players maintained afterward they still have hope.

"I think every goal we set is reachable," said quarterback Jake Locker. "[If] we win the last five games, we are over .500 and get to a bowl game. That's what we set out to do at the beginning of the year and we still have a great opportunity to do that."

The fans who booed as the game ended, and who have spent the hours since flooding talk shows, blogs and message boards with criticism of the team and coaching staff, might put it a little more pessimistically.

As Locker points out, the margin for error is now nil. With five games left, UW has to win them all for a winning season.

That stretch run starts Saturday at Stanford with a 3:30 p.m. game.

Anything else, and Tyrone Willingham will become the first Washington coach with three consecutive losing seasons.

That would increase the heat on Willingham, whose standing among many Huskies fans has fallen markedly in the past three weeks as the Huskies have given up 147 points — the most in any three-game stretch in school history — and 1,719 yards in losing to Arizona State, Oregon and Arizona.

Athletic director Todd Turner said two weeks ago he is fully confident in Willingham and his staff to turn the team around, and he expects Willingham to serve out all five years of his contract. Still, that hasn't stopped the rumor mill from churning, especially with fan favorite Jim Mora Jr., an assistant with the Seahawks, just a few miles away.

"We all know we are going to get a lot of shots," said offensive coordinator Tim Lappano. "We know that that's the deal. We've just got to keep them [players] together. That starts with the head coach to every assistant on the staff, graduate assistants, everybody. We've just got to circle the wagons. Everybody's going to be shooting at us and if they [the players] see us flinch, we've got no chance."

Where the Huskies obviously need the most improvement is on defense.

Washington is allowing 474 yards per game, which would obliterate the previous record of 419.1 set in 2005, Willingham's first season as coach.

Also at risk is the school record for points allowed in a season of 376 set in 1973. The Huskies have allowed 273 points (34.1 a game) and have games remaining against such explosive offenses as California and Hawaii.

The recent defensive meltdowns have elicited some harsh criticism of defensive coordinator Kent Baer, who has been with Willingham since he became a head coach in 1995 and has been his coordinator since 1999.

Willingham said after the game Saturday he thought making major changes to the defensive scheme or personnel this late in the season would be "awfully risky."

But some tinkering seems inevitable.

Senior defensive tackle Jordan Reffett defended Baer and Washington's coaches after the game.

"I'm confident in everything the coaches do," he said. "They work hard at putting schemes together and we are always in the right spots. It's just sometimes we miss a tackle or bust a coverage. I take a lot of heat off the coaches because it's us out there playing. We've just got to make plays, and that's the bottom line."

The bright spot of the Arizona game was the offense, which scored 75 points the past two games, the most in a two-game stretch since early in the 2003 season.

Washington's 572 total yards were the most since the Huskies had 670 in 1999. Huskies fans probably didn't enjoy the fact that that came against a Willingham-coached Stanford team, with Baer as the coordinator.

"From an offensive standpoint, we could be scary," Lappano said, "because we turned it over five times and dropped a lot of balls. So it could have been scary numbers. So we can build on that. We are doing some good things. If we were getting beat 55-14 and had 200 yards of offense, I don't know what I'd tell you. But we are moving the football and making a lot of plays. I think we can keep those guys pretty fired up."

Bob Condotta: 206-515-5699 or bcondotta@seattletimes.com