When Washington head coach Chris Petersen sat in on a linebackers meeting earlier this season, the players in the room didn’t think much of it. Petersen will occasionally join position groups to watch film, so nothing seemed that out of the ordinary.
As they studied clips, inside linebackers coach Bob Gregory kept focusing on Jake Wambaugh and Matt Preston, even showing video of them from years ago. That struck senior Tevis Bartlett as somewhat odd, but since Gregory has singled out players in the past in order to demonstrate technique, he didn’t dwell on it.
So none of the Huskies really saw it coming when Gregory landed on the last clip — one of Wambaugh and Preston from four years ago — and said, “You guys have been battling for a long time.