Beierly's Weekend Performance Adds to Future Husky QB Hopes
When hired as the University of Washington football coach, Kalen DeBoer was fairly emphatic that the program would revolve around the quarterback first and foremost — and in two years he proceeded to sign transfers Michael Penix Jr. and Will Rogers, plus recruits Austin Mack and Dermaricus Davis Jr., to go with one-time Husky starter Dylan Morris.
All five were together with the Huskies on the sideline for the CFP national championship game against Michigan, with everyone at least wearing a UW jersey.
Now comes the newly hired Jedd Fisch, bringing a similar QB mindset to Montlake with spring football practice just two weeks away.
Rogers and Davis, after checking out their options during the coaching changeover that sent DeBoer to Alabama and drew Fisch from Arizona, elected to stay the course with the UW with promises that the quarterback will be made to look good at all times while standing tall in the Husky pocket.
After Rogers is one-and-done, Fisch should have a fairly healthy and entertaining quarterback competition a year from now.
He could choose a starter from among the following: the 6-foot-5, 187-pound Davis from Altadena, California, and 5-foot-11, 185-pound Demond Williams Jr. from Chandler, Arizona, who are freshmen and members of the 2024 class; and 6-foot-1, 215-pound Ashton "Dash" Beierly from Santa Ana, California, who is committed to the UW for 2025 and will play this season as a transfer for Southern California powerhouse Mater Dei High School.
Over the weekend, an ultra-smooth Beierly topped everyone with his athletic testing rating at the Los Angeles Elite 11, which is not unlike a high school combine.
It's interesting how DeBoer and Fisch can be real picky about their quarterback choices. While both coaches were in agreement that Mack, Davis, Williams and Beierly all were well worth pursuing, DeBoer withdrew Jimmy Lake's 2022 offer to 6-foot-5, 210-pound Jackson Stratton from Mission Bay, California, sending Stratton to Colorado State, and he's now in the transfer portal.
Fisch, for that matter, apparently did the same with 6-foot-3, 225-pound quarterback Jackson Kollock from Laguna Beach, California, who was committed to DeBoer for 2025 but is now revisiting his recruiting options because the Huskies chose to lock in with Beierly for the next recruiting class.
Meantime, the aforementioned Morris, the Huskies' 2020 and 2021 starting quarterback, will open spring practice at James Madison on Thursday, seeking the No. 1 job with the Sun Belt school in his sixth and final season of college football.
It doesn't seem all that long ago that Morris won a four-man competition to claim the UW job, beating out Ethan Garbers, now a UCLA senior and a part-time starter; Jacob Sirmon, who recently concluded his college career at Northern Colorado; and Sacramento State transfer Kevin Thomson, who never played in Montlake but finished his football career there.
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