At Big Ten Media Days, Main Husky Topic Was Demond Williams

Spending Thursday at Big Ten Media Days in Chicago, the University of Washington football team didn't have much breaking news to share, outside of Jedd Fisch suggesting that injured running back Jordan Washington might not play this season.

But even then, with the sophomore out with a neck issue, that was no surprise to anyone who saw him get hurt during spring football. Nobody rushes back to play when a neck is involved, as edge rusher Laiatu Lutu showed when he missed the 2020 and 2021 seasons for the Huskies.

So the obvious UW topic for the media to readdress in the Windy City was quarterback Demond Williams Jr.'s truncated offseason in which he considered leaving the program before reversing himself in January and staying put.

Leave it to Fisch, with his continuous Be a Pro approach, to come up with an NFL analogy to explain the situation one more time.

"I looked at it through the eyes of an NFL coach," the third-year Husky leader said. "Sometimes a player asks for a trade and doesn't get it. Sometimes a player holds out for a couple of days and comes back. Sometimes a player doesn't report to OTAs and then only shows up at the mandatory mini- camp."

Fisch also informed his team this wasn't going to be an issue because, like it or not, college football has changed.

"i tried to educate our players in that short period of time like welcome to the new world order," he said. "Things are going to be different than they once were. What we're going to do is we're going to stay consistent and we're going to respect the situation. We're going to explain that, hey, this is part of what we're going to deal with and we're going to welcome him back."

And there was one more thing the coach made clear to his guys, should any of them feel their teammate was disloyal.

"He never went in the portal, he never went to another team," Fisch said. "We had a few days that we had to have some good discussions. I thought that the open dialogue we had was 10 [times] better than any conversation that we had before."

The other elephant in the room was the playcalling duties that Fisch handles all by himself. This offseason, he even went as far as to eliminate offensive coordinator from anyone's job title and part ways with Jimmie Dougherty, who held the role in 2025 and is now with the Seattle Seahawks.

To fill the open coaching spot, he promoted quality coach and former NFL quarterback JP Losman to be his QB coach, which Dougherty previously had handled.

"We had one less voice to the quarterback," Fisch said. "I thought with Demond the best thing we could do is have one relationship and bring JP Losman, and let it kind of be JP the former quarterback and myself, and be able to make that the real relationship."

Still, it's never been fully explained why Dougherty, who had been with Fisch in Arizona, couldn't continue. He'd been a quarterback himself at Missouri, though not a pro.

While the Huskies have a lot of resources, such as an upgraded defense and a veteran offensive line, it's fairly obvious by now that the Huskies will go as Demond Williams goes.

The coach said Williams will benefit from entering his second season as the UW starter, that he's bigger, stronger, more knowledgeable about the offense and a better leader. Not only that, he's no longer a teenager, having turned 20 this spring.

"We have an elite quarterback in Demond Williams," he reminded.

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