Washington Football: BBK is back-to-back Defensive Player of the Week
By Ed Stein
For the second week in a row, Washington football has the PAC-12 Defensive Player of the Week. Once again it’s linebacker Ben Burr-Kirven.
Washington football has its first back-to-back winner of the PAC-12 Defensive Player of the Week in 16 years. Linebacker Ben Burr-Kirven was selected by the conference once again for his outstanding game last week against Arizona State University. The last Husky accomplish the feat was cornerback Derrick Johnson in 2002.
Everywhere
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There was an old cartoon called Klondike Cat. The cat was a member of the Canadian Mounties, his arch-nemesis was a mouse bandit named Savior Faire. Every time the mouse committed a crime, “Savoir Faire is everywhere,” echoed throughout the countryside. I guarantee you, Arizona State’s offense was saying the same thing about the Huskies linebacker. “BBK is everywhere!”
Ben Burr-Kirven was just about everywhere on Saturday night. Let’s start with tackles. Burr-Kirvin had 20 tackles against ASU, 14 of them were solo. The last time a Huskies player had 20 or more tackles in a game was back in 1996. Coincidentally, that was against ASU as well, when John Fiala had 22 stops. BBK had 11 tackles at half-time, the same amount he had total against Utah when he won the PAC-12 DPoW, the week prior.
Burr-Kirven didn’t even know how many tackles he had until after the game. When informed by members of the media about his accomplishment, BBK simply said: “It felt like a lot.” His story for the game doesn’t end with 20 tackles. The senior also forced two fumbles from ASU running back Trelon Smith, one of which he recovered.
His coach Chris Petersen wasn’t surprised by the star linebacker’s performance. In his remarks to the media after the game Petersen said, The guy’s a heck of a player, obviously, he plays like that all the time. He’s fast. He’s really, really smart and he’s as tough as they come.”
The week prior Burr-Kirven met with the media and may have foreshadowed what was ahead against Arizona State. “We always play with emotion, he said. “You have to be passionate to play defense. I think a lot of it comes from how much you care.”
Next. What we learned from Chris Petersen's weekly presser 9/24. dark
Whether it was in his own secondary or in the Sun Devils backfield, BBK showed how much he cared.