How Long Will It Take for the UW to Come Up With Another TD Toss?

It's been five quarters since the pass-happy Huskies had one.

Ryan Grubb's University of Washington offensive unit ran off an exhaustive 87 plays last weekend in its game at Arizona State and a funny thing happened to these guys on their way out of town.

They left the desert that day without throwing a touchdown pass.

For the first time in six games, the Huskies' high-powered offense engineered by Michael Penix Jr. failed to to come up with a scoring toss. 

No six points generated through the crisp Sun Devil Stadium air. 

Of course, the continually goal-line-sniffing Huskies scored six times against ASU, but five came through their suddenly reinvigorated rushing attack and another was chalked up on a Peyton Henry field goal.

This unusual circumstance — no TD passes after collecting 16 in the first five outings — made Grubb laugh when asked if that was noticeably rare for him.

"Fair question — it was," he said. "For us, normally one guy can break loose on the deep ball."

In this case, Arizona State concentrated on taking away the scoring passes, especially in the red zone, and the Huskies responded with three short touchdown runs by Cam Davis and lone point-producing rushes by Wayne Taulapapa and Penix, plus Henry's three-pointer, in the 45-38 setback.

"Once we got down there, I thought we did a better job of that," Grubb said of the run game, remembering a couple of successful goal-line stands by Michigan State. "Once we got inside the 20, they were making us run it with our legs a little bit, which was good.

"It was good to see the O-line, you know, if you took the 30-yard loss [bad snap] out of it at the end of the game, I thought they did a good job of running the football."

As it stands, the last Husky touchdown pass came five quarters ago against UCLA at the Rose Bowl, when Penix delivered a 9-yard toss to Rome Odunze in the back of the end zone to close out the 40-32 loss.

Penix threw four scoring passes that day and his 16 rank him sixth nationally, with Ohio State's C.J. Stroud the leader with 24.

It will interesting to see how long this aerial drought continues against the Arizona Wildcats on Saturday against Husky Stadium. 

Grubb no doubt is itching to get another Husky touchdown pass or two or three in the books after that rare shutout against Arizona State.

"It really wasn't designed that way," he said. "It was just which way the ball was going."

Go to si.com/college/washington to read the latest Inside the Huskies stories — as soon as they’re published.

Not all stories are posted on the fan sites.

Find Inside the Huskies on Facebook by searching: Inside Huskies/FanNation at SI.com or https://www.facebook.com/dan.raley.12

Follow Dan Raley of Inside the Huskies on Twitter: @DanRaley1 or @UWFanNation or @DanRaley3