Huskies' Penix to Attend Peyton Manning Passing Academy

Michael Penix Jr. used a small piece of advice he received from Peyton Manning two years ago as a blueprint to become one of the best quarterbacks in college football.

Control what you can control. What you can control, work at until you can’t get it wrong.

The 17-year NFL veteran and Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee offered that tidbit of wisdom when the two met at the Manning Passing Academy in July 2021.

Penix, then a redshirt junior at Indiana University, was one of 45 quarterbacks invited by executive director Archie Manning to be a counselor for the four-day camp held on the campus of Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, Louisiana.

“Good kid. Always had a smile on his face,” Archie Manning said of Penix. “Worked hard. I remember Michael was really good with the kids, coaching all our quarterbacks, and seemed to get along real well with the other quarterbacks.”

Later this month, Penix will return to the bayou state for his second summer as a Manning counselor. He joins Jake Browning as the only other Husky to do this, in 2017 and 2018.

Usually the Pac-12 has between one and three quarterbacks invited to be counselors, depending on the season. This summer, a record number seven from the conference are expected to attend, with all but two having done this before.

Notable QBs attending the 2023 Manning Passing Academy🎯

More: https://t.co/XtjoPwOvf6 pic.twitter.com/DJGRKcCbjL
— On3 (@On3sports) June 8, 2023

The rest of the list includes Jayden de Laura (Arizona), Drew Pyne (Arizona State), Shedeur Sanders (Colorado), Ty Thompson (Oregon), Cameron Rising (Utah) and Cameron Ward (Washington State), all joining Penix in Thibodaux on June 22-25. That will tie the record number from the conference, set back in 2019.

Oregon starting quarterback Bo Nix, a previous attendee, originally was expected to attend but his back-up, Thompson, took the spot instead. Another notable starter, USC junior Caleb Williams, had planned to come but a scheduling conflict got in the way.

The four-day camp brings more than 1,200 high school players from around the country to Nicholls State for a one-of-a-kind camp experience. The counselors will participate in an event appropriately named Friday Night Lights run through quarterback challenge competitions to measure up against each other.

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