10 Things To Know About 2025 UW Opener, Good and Bad

When this first of a kind Washington-Colorado State football game was announced in 2021, who knew that one team would have left the Pacific-12 while the other was making final arrangements to join the conference by the time this match-up was played?

Had they waited until 2026 rather than this coming Saturday night to settle this non-league outing, the Huskies could have helped usher in a new era with the Rams leaving the Mountain West and playing in their first football game as a Pac-12 member in Montlake.

Ah, but forecasting the future is never an uncomplicated endeavor. After all, Jimmy Lake was the UW football coach back then when this particular game was put together and more than likely thinking he would be part of it.

2. Coach Jedd Fisch mentions how his second UW team is much more experienced than his first. However, we took the season-opening starters from last year and compared them to the current first-teamers. Those 2024 Huskies entered the season with 239 career college football starts while the latest group has 227.

Jedd Fisch is caught in a pensive moment during the 2024 Eastern Michigan game. | Skylar Lin Visuals

However, last year's players came in with 64 starts that happened at the FCS level or lower while this year's Huskies have just 26 of those.

Add to that, Fisch's 2025 lineup has four fairly talented players who have never started a college game before (John Mills, Raiden Vines-Bright, Jacob Lane, Deven Bryant) while last year's team had two (Soane Faasolo, Gaard Memmelaar).

3. Not to take any of the shine off this potentially promising season, but the Huskies enter the opener against Colorado State with a two-game losing streak in hand. They fell to Oregon 49-21 in Eugene to close the regular season and to Louisville 35-34 in the Sun Bowl in late December. Three in a row doesn't seem plausible.

4. Of course, we can hear the loud rebuttal to that last factoid. Yes, the Huskies will enter this season armed to the teeth with a 20-game home win streak, which is the nation's second longest trailing only Georgia's 32 games without a loss.

The UW school record for home success is 45 consecutive victories in 1908-17, ending three years before Husky Stadium was built.

5. The UW will take the field with double vision: in the starting lineup they will send out two Williams (Demond and Rashid), two Bryants (Leroy and Deven) and a pair of Hatchetts (Geirean and Landen). Only the Hatchetts are related.

Rashid Williams (3) leaves the field with former UW quarterbacks Teddy Purcell (17) and Alex Johnston (19). | Skylar Lin photos

6. In its pregame notes, the UW shows the Huskies have a 31-12 record overall against Mountain West schools. However, we did a little deeper dive and found the UW has a much more modest 8-4 record against those teams when they were actual members of the MWC, which was formed in 1999.

The Huskies' last loss at the hands of a Mountain West team was in 2015 to Boise State on the road, 16-13.

7. The UW football team is 63-16 since Husky Stadium was remodeled and reopened in 2013, with the first game played against, you guessed it, a Mountain West team -- Boise State, also another soon to become Pac-12 member.

The Huskies won that one 38-6, with Steve Sarkisian opening his fifth and final season as the UW head coach.

8. This 2025 football season marks the 136th for Washington, which has had 90 winning records, 32 losing and 13 that broke even. The Huskies have an overall win-loss-tie ledger of 781-467-50, and 21-21-1 in bowl games.

9. Fisch is in the second season of a seven-year, $54 million contract at the UW that initially came with a $12 million buyout if he left before 2025 and since has dropped to $10 million should he leave before 2026.

Jackson Stratton, right, was a UW commit for Jimmy Lake who played at Colorado State before transferring to Iowa. | Cody Scanlan/The Register / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

10. One of the few things the UW and Colorado State have had in common was quarterback Jackson Stratton from Mission Bay, California. Lake's staff received a commitment from him and Kalen DeBoer's coaches presumably pulled the offer and the QB joined the Rams.

The 6-foot-4, 205-pound Stratton spent the 2022 and 2023 seasons with Colorado State, appearing in four games that first season. He's now a junior at Iowa. A year ago, he started twice for the Hawkeyes and beat Nebraska and Maryland.

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