Huskies Hope for Less Complicated Utah Game This Time

The Washington and Utah football teams haven't played for 36 months and a lot has changed. In that time, they survived the COVID pandemic, the Utes dealt with the tragic deaths of a pair of players and the Huskies jettisoned a coach.

On Saturday at 12:30 p.m., they reunite in Husky Stadium as top 20 teams, no doubt in the wind and the rain, probably wondering if they'll be dealing with another game as crazy as the last one.

For those with short memories, the Huskies in 2020 showed the first signs of unraveling under Jimmy Lake by stumbling around and falling behind 21-0 after a half, then regrouped and stormed back for a 24-21 last-second victory.

Kalen DeBoer's fifth-ranked UW team (9-0 overall, 6-0 Pac-12) — after dealing with five consecutive close games, winning each from three to 10 points — would much prefer something far less chaotic.

Yet 13th-ranked and defensive-minded Utah (7-2, 4-2), with victories over Florida, Baylor, UCLA and USC on its ledger, probably won't make it easy for the home team at all, especially with the testy weather conditions.

"It's still a physical defense over there," said quarterback Dylan Morris, the UW starter in the 2020 game and now the back-up.

In Utes coach Kyle Whittingham and the Huskies' DeBoer, this is the first matchup between possibly the top coaches in the conference, no apologies to Oregon's Dan Lanning or USC's Lincoln Riley.

Whittingham, of course, has guided Utah to consecutive Pac-12 championships and still has his team in contention in spite of not having starting quarterback Cam Rising healthy for a single snap and forced to sit out the season.

DeBoer merely has coached the Huskies to a 20-2 record in his two seasons in Montlake, and his team currently holds a 16-game win streak, second only to Georgia's 26 in a row among FBS schools.

A year after the Utes' last visit, Lake was fired for shoving a player during the UW-Oregon rivalry outing for a national TV audience to see and presumably for not winning enough.

Utah tragically lost running back Ty Jordan and cornerback Aaron Lowe, a pair of Texans who each played in the 2020 game, to gun violence back home over a nine-month stretch that following year. Against the Huskies, Jordan rushed 10 times for 97 yards.

The Utes have never seen quarterback Michael Penix Jr. up close, only Morris, who was the starter in 2020 and now serves as Penix's stand-in.

Three years ago, Utah completely shut down Morris and the rest of the Huskies for a half and built a commanding 21-0 lead. Over the first 30 minutes, Lake's team handed the ball over on a pair of interceptions, a missed field goal attempt and two punts.

"The guys post snap moved around and I know that kind of flustered me in that first half," Morris said. "It was the first time I had really seen it and then I made a couple mistakes. It was the first time I did that as a young guy and then we kind of battled back."

After the break, Morris guided the Huskies to three touchdowns and a field goal. He threw 21- and 16-yard scoring passes to tight end Cade Otton — the latter serving as the game-winner with just 36 seconds left in the game.

Ironically last weekend, Otton caught a pair of TD passes in a football game for the first time since his Utah heroics, only for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as a second-year NFL vet.

Against the Houston Texans, Otton hauled in a 14-yard scoring catch from Baker Mayfield for a 37-33 lead with 46 seconds left to play — reminiscent of his Husky heroics — yet the Bucs gave up an incredibly late touchdown with 6 seconds remaining and lost a tough one, 39-37.

"I felt bad that he caught that one at the end and it ended up not being the game-winner, but it was good to see," Morris said.

Back to Husky Stadium, Morris probably won't get a chance to repeat his Utah-beating ways this weekend in Montlake or ever. Penix would have to be incapacitated for him to enter Saturday's game.

Once Penix leaves and Morris tries to reclaim the starting job in 2024, the Huskies and the Utes will have gone their separate ways to the Big Ten and Big 12 conferences.

Against the UW this time, Utah will turn to quarterback Bryson Barnes, someone who would have been the Utes back-up had Rising not injured a knee in last year's Rose Bowl against Penn State and gone into extensive recovery.

Barnes, a Utah native who grew up in a rural area, earlier matched the Huskies' recent accomplishment by outdueling USC and its Heisman Trophy-winning QB Caleb Williams to win 34-32, bringing a memorable quote from his coach.

“They’ve got a Heisman Trophy winner at quarterback," Whittingham said after the game. "But we’ve got ourselves a pig farmer at quarterback, so we’re proud of that guy too.”

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