Washington football's defense displaying unique versatility

In Ryan Walters' second season with the Washington Huskies, he's added several wrinkles to his defense.While the former Purdue head coach has continued to run a 4-2-5 alignment as his base defense, over the last few weeks the Huskies have shown off virtually every alignment under the sun. Against Iowa, the Huskies came out in a traditional 4-3 look to try and handle the Hawkeyes' physical offensive line and run-heavy attack.At Purdue and Nebraska, Walters alternated between his base look, several five-man front alignments—which he emphasized heavily during his days as the Boilermakers' head coach—and even a 3-3-5 to allow some of his better athletes like safety Alex McLaughlin, who earned Big Ten Defensive Player of the Week honors against the Cornhuskers, and linebacker Zaydrius Rainey-Sale.After the Huskies executed their game plan to perfection against the Cornhuskers and quarterback Anthony Colandrea, Walters had high praise for his unit."They're a very smart group," he said on Tuesday. "Their ability to allow the staff to game plan week to week: what does the offense like to do? How do we take that away? What are the best ways to do that with what we do, and how can we categorize things to not make it brand new, just to make it adjustments?""Those guys, when we install things, they work extra on understanding it; they meet extra, they watch extra film, and our staff does a great job of teaching and categorizing things to where it makes sense. You're not memorizing plays; you're learning concepts, and that gives us a lot of flexibility week in and week out to not be predictable from game to game."Against a Penn State offense that ranks in the middle of the Big Ten in both scoring and total offense, Walters has a variety of looks he can throw at veteran quarterback Rocco Becht and the Nittany Lions.This article originally appeared on Huskies Wire: Washington football's defense displaying unique versatility