As last season totally unraveled for the University of Washington football team, Husky leadership naturally was questioned.
The school removed Jimmy Lake as the head coach with three games remaining, leaving defensive coordinator Bob Gregory and receivers coach Junior Adams in charge, not an ideal situation.
At the same time, the team no longer seemed to have a commanding voice in the locker room, with no one stepping up and trying to rally everyone. Many of the Huskies' more prominent players — Zion Tupuola-Fetui, Edefuan Ulofoshio, Ryan Bowman, Cade Otton, Jackson Kirkland and Richard Newton — were relegated to the sideline and muted by injuries.
Inheriting a 4-8 team, Kalen DeBoer broached this subject of leadership right away. He and his staff challenged everyone to become more invested in Husky football, to put even more effort into their preparation and to step up and inspire others to remove the lingering bad taste.
Whether or not each Husky was capable of taking this step, the new staff at least had them thinking about it.
Sophomore cornerback Jacobe Covington, for instance. Meeting with media members on Monday, for the first time since coming to the UW, the sophomore from Chandler, Arizona, made a stark admission after practice without any prompting.
"I think I could be in more of a leader role in the cornerback room," Covington said. "I talked to my group about that today. I apologized and said I'm ready to take the next step."
Apologized?
"I don't think I've been a great leader in the room," he conceded. "Now I'm ready to take that step."
Well-liked and well-spoken among the Huskies, Covington was speaking to a cluster of reporters when no less than three teammates walking past called out his name. One was Indiana transfer quarterback Michael Penix Jr. as he headed up the tunnel. Another yelled down at him from up above in a stadium concourse.
Yet it wouldn't have been all that surprising had Covington left the program following the Lake coaching change and the disheartening season.
He arrived at the UW as a 4-star recruit, hailed as the next great defensive back for a program known for producing them, and he proceeded to play sparingly over his first two seasons.
Yet Covington never considered going anywhere else while everything changed around him.
"A lot of guys stayed," he said. "So we know the standard and we didn't want to let the standard drop with learning [it] from coach Lake and everything. It's been good."
With previous UW cornerback starters Kyler Gordon and Trent McDuffie waiting to be taken in next week's NFL draft, Covington is one of the replacement candidates. His time couldn't be too far off.
"I love it up here — it's home," he said. "I wasn't going nowhere. I love the fans, I love the city. You know, anywhere you go, you've got to play football. I decided to stay here and stay loyal to the fans."
Sounds like the wise words of a Husky leader.
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