Huskies Slide All The Way Out of AP Top 25

Paying a heavy price for its poor play, the University of Washington football team has the unique if not embarrassing happenstance of winning its first two games of the season and dropping completely out of the Associated Press Top 25 rankings.

On Sunday, that's exactly what happened to Jedd Fisch's underachieving team.

Following less than enthusiastic 24-10 and 16-14 victories over Washington State and Utah State, the UW has gone from 17th to No. 19 and now out of the poll.

Style points are most important in today's college football climate, where every little detail matters.

The Huskies wound up as the leader of the "others receiving votes" category, finishing with 172 points from the voters' ballots, which was just 10 fewer than No. 25 Virginia. The next lowest team outside the poll was Florida, with 83 points, leaving the UW in sort of a poll universe all of its own.

And, yes, this sort of slide has happened before to the Huskies, where excitement was summarily replaced by disappointment for a 1972 Montlake entry to begin Sonny Sixkiller's senior year, when things didn't turn out anywhere near as expected.

Fifty-years ago, Sixkiller's highly anticipated Huskies opened the season ranked No. 9 by AP, but struggled to beat heavy underdog Pacific, that had a defensive back named Pete Carroll, by only 13-6.

The big problem was Sixkiller was injured and didn't play in the season-opening game and it showed in the UW performance at home.

The Huskies dropped to 12th in the next AP poll.

A week later, Sixkiller played but he didn't start and the UW barely beat another supposedly overmatched team at home in Duke, this time by 14-6.

The Huskies dipped to No. 15 and they were 2-0.

A season full of great promise finally imploded when Sixkiller got injured again, missed half of the season and his once exalted UW team finished 8-3, didn't go to the Rose Bowl as hoped and a swashbuckling era was over.

Now it's up to Fisch to try and pull this latest group of Huskies out of their unexpected funk that primarily centers around a lack of offense.

While this 2026 UW team has let three- and four-touchdown underdogs hang close, it turns to Eastern Washington next weekend in a game -- Big Ten against the Big Sky -- that will be projected to be even more lopsided.

Seemingly, the Huskies can only go up from here.

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