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Inside The Huskies

Early Forecasters Dubious, But Don't Completely Ignore UW Football Team

The Huskies are getting docked for having just two starters back from title-game lineup.
Dan Raley|
Early Forecasters Dubious, But Don't Completely Ignore UW Football Team
Early Forecasters Dubious, But Don't Completely Ignore UW Football Team

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Washington Huskies

Poor Washington is no longer a top 25 college football team after its national runner-up finish, The Athletic recently lamented.

Six weeks after finishing second and nearly six months until their season opener against Weber State, the Huskies don't appear anywhere in ESPN's way-too-early preseason poll either.

However, 247Sports somehow thinks a Jedd Fisch-coached and reconfigured UW team will sneak in there and merits a No. 25 preseason ranking.

Brett McMurphy of Action Network omitted the Huskies from his forecasted 12-team College Football Playoff bracket, but he has them facing Clemson in the Holiday Bowl.

Welcome to college football's silly season, where everyone takes an initial stab at predicting how the coming schedule will play out, way in advance, after the coaching changes have been made, most high school recruits have signed and everyone has sifted through the first of two transfer portal offerings.

The Huskies are an easy team to dismiss right now, returning just linebacker Alphonzo Tuputala and cornerback Elijah Jackson from among the 22 starters who opened against Michigan in the national championship game on Jan. 8.

The biggest question surrounding this UW team inherited by Fisch is what will the offensive line, after replacing all five starters, look like when the Huskies open the season on Aug. 31 at home against Weber State? Will promising sophomore center Landen Hatchett be fully recovered from a December knee injury? Will San Diego State tackle transfer Drew Azzopardi, another sophomore, be as productive as advertised?

Fisch has intimated he might sign as many as five offensive linemen from the transfer portal in May after he uses whoever is available for spring football in April.

While the returning starters overall are almost zero, the Huskies actually aren't that far off from putting a competitive team on the field.

Mississippi State transfer quarterback Will Rogers brings 12,315 passing yards to the UW, which ranks him second all-time in the SEC, to the offense, and should count for something. He'll be handing the ball to Arizona transfer running back Jonah Coleman, who arrives in Montlake ranked by Pro Football Focus as the nation's top rusher statistically among those changing teams.

Defensively, the Huskies will build around senior linebackers Carson Bruener and Tuputala, plus junior Elijah Jackson at cornerback, have added Arizona starters in junior cornerback Ephesians Prysock and junior edge rusher Isaiah Ward, and have overly promising edge rushers in junior Zach Durfee and sophomore Jacob Lane. 

If the UW can only unearth a playmaker on its defensive front, after picking up new tackles in Montana State transfer Sebastian Valdez and Kansas junior-college transfer Bryce Butler, the Huskies might find their way back into everyone's top 25 polls. 

Another forecaster has pegged Fisch's team at 7-8 wins next season when it joins the Big Ten and plays with the big boys on a regular basis this coming fall.

Poor Washington might not be as poor as everyone thinks right now. 

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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