Beautiful day, it was, when Jimmy Lake took his first steps toward constructing one of college football’s best defensive secondaries. Ideal day, actually, for a stroll around the Factoria neighborhood that was home to one of the nation’s most coveted safeties.
It was January 2014, and Lake was in his first week as Washington’s new defensive backs coach, having followed Chris Petersen from Boise State. With national signing day just a few weeks away, Petersen and his staff had to have a sense of urgency to assemble a respectable recruiting class with so little time to do so.