Jimmy Lake, fired 27 months ago as the University of Washington football coach, continues to repair his reputation after getting hired on Monday as the Atlanta Falcons’ defensive coordinator.
Lake, 47, follows Raheem Morris from the Los Angeles Rams to Atlanta after they worked together this past season as defensive assistant and defensive coordinator on Sean McVay’s staff, respectively. On Friday, Morris was named as the Falcons’ new coach.
Previously, Lake served as the defensive backs coach in 2010-11 for Morris when the latter was the Tampa Bay coach, so they know each other well.
After his coaching disaster at the UW — barely two seasons that were greatly disrupted by the COVID global pandemic and a sudden program downturn — Lake quickly has bounced back and jumpstarted his career.
He originally came to the Huskies in 2014 as part of Chris Petersen’s staff, and then was promoted to head coach when Petersen stepped down following the 2019 season.
Dealing with the pandemic, Lake coached the UW to a 3-1 record that left the Huskies atop the Pac-12 North Division, but a COVID outbreak that infected all of his offensive linemen prevented his team from playing for the conference title or in a bowl game.
In 2021, Lake entered the season with a veteran team ranked No. 20 in the preseason but the Huskies lost their opener to Montana in a shocking 13-7 upset at home and everything went downhill from there.
Caught by TV cameras shoving reserve linebacker Ruperake Fuavai against Oregon for getting into a sideline scuffle, Lake first was suspended and next fired a week later. He ended up coaching the Huskies for just 13 games.
It wasn’t spelled out this way, but Lake’s ouster probably was a combination of his treatment of the player and an underachieving football team that would finish 4-8. Lake didn’t coach during 2022 and joined the Rams 11 months ago.
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