Huskies Had To Keep An Eye on Manu To Keep Him on Sideline

Making a healthy Jacob Manu sit out last Friday night's Washington-Rutgers football game sounded easier than it was.

The plan: confine the senior linebacker to the sideline to protect his future interests.

Preserve his eligibility and Manu could play a full season for the Huskies in 2026 after a knee injury and resulting surgery left him with two partial campaigns at Arizona and the UW.

Bring him back next year and he stood to benefit in so many ways: financially, rewarded with rich name, image and likeness and revenue-sharing payouts; professionally, with the NFL getting a much longer look at him; and competitively, by serving as a Husky team co-captain and being at his football best.

Yet one little problem persisted.

There was a lingering concern his competitive juices just might get in the way and spoil everyone's best intentions.

He was permitted to warm up before the Rutgers game, but under certain conditions.

"I didn't allow him to a have a helmet because I didn't trust him," UW coach Jedd Fisch said. "I made him take his pads off to make sure."

The easy part was telling Manu he wasn't going to play against Rutgers. The hard part was making sure he was listening.

Even while idle for the evening, the linebacker insisted he would be dressed as if he was playing against Rutgers.

Out of the question.

"No, you're not going to be fully dressed," Fisch told Manu firmly. "I know you too well and that's not going to be an option. You can be fully dressed for warm-up, but you are not allowed to be fully dressed for the game. You have to have no helmet and no pads, so there's no question about you going into the game."

Fisch, who coached the linebacker at Arizona for two seasons,] watched him go from just one scholarship offer in high school to becoming a first-team All-Pac-12 selection and the league's leading tackler with 116 in 2023.

The guy is super competitive.

Jacob Manu surveys the field in the Ohio State game, which was his first start as a Husky. | Dave Sizer photo

Manu plays just one way, whether on the Arizona scout team, which was brief because he repeatedly disrupted the No. 1 offense efforts, or in the starting lineup, which happened seven times when he was a freshman and 27 times overall in Tucson.

"All of a sudden, there's 10 guys out there for a play and it's, 'Give me a linebacker,' and my man just wants to compete," Fisch said, envisioning how his defender would end up on the field.

By kickoff, Manu was in shorts and his No. 9 football jersey. He had a white Gatorade towel with him at all times, gripping it tightly around his back while leaning over and watching everything intently.

Everyone and everything got through the Rutgers game intact. Manu. His football team. His eligibility. Fisch's sanity.

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