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Washington Football: Keith Price Still Struggling

The Washington Huskies are still not getting enough production through the air, as Keith Price continues to struggle. Our own Jack Follman, along with Anthony Cassino and Chris Landon of UW Dawg Pound discuss the issues with the passing game.

Otto Greule Jr

Keith Price has been struggling this year. Are most of his struggles due to personnel issues, or is he just not as sharp as he looked last year?

Chris Landon, UW Dawg Pound: The Huskies offense is still quite broken. They have yet to score more than 21 points against an FBS opponent all season and Keith Price is still completely out of synch at the QB position. The good news is that the rushing attack behind Bishop Sankey has been better than anyone had thought and the offensive line has gotten a big piece back from injury in starting RT Ben Riva. Riva's return puts everyone back into the natural positions and produces a ripple effect for the entire line. It is no surprise that the O-Line had its first "good game" of the season against Oregon State. If Price can lean on his run game and begin to trust his O-Line more, he'll quit breaking the pocket so early and, hopefully, start making plays down field. That is the theory, at least.

Anthony Cassino, UW Dawg Pound: The passing game is still a shambles. Price is still inconsistent and missing open guys far too frequently. They were able to get a few big plays down the field to Kasen Williams against OSU, but with Austin Seferian-Jenkins not at full strength and no experienced depth behind Williams it's just not going to get consistent. But if the offensive line continues to improve as it has over the past couple weeks then the production in general should follow suit.

Jack Follman, Pacific Takes: Both, he clearly really misses the offensive linemen who aren't playing right now along with Chris Polk and especially Jermaine Kearse and Devin Aguilar, but it has to be more than that. The complete lack of an offensive line and the brutal first half schedule have really got into his head and I think that is the biggest problem. I think it was most apparent against Arizona where he was facing a very poor pass defense and even when he wasn't pressured he was missing open receivers on passes. He made those passes last year against lower competition, so it just doesn't make sense. Mentally, he is in as bad a place as I have ever seen a college quarterback right now and he won't be able to stop struggling until he can get out of it.