Huskies Take High-Powered Penix Road Show to the Desert

The UW quarterback leads the nation in passing yardage.

Michael Penix Jr. is exceedingly cool under fire as the University of Washington starting quarterback, standing firm in the pocket against edge rushers, blitzing defensive back and even a probing press corps, the latter every Tuesday and Saturday.

While he leads the nation in passing yards, his inquisitors want to know about those two interceptions he threw at UCLA. About his mindset in threading the ball through a gauntlet of hands. About his confidence level while under a heavy pass rush.

Penix doesn't blink or duck. He's good at this part of the job. He looks you straight in the eye and always offers a poised and measured response.

Yet every once in a while, the 6-foot-3, 213-pound player from Tampa, Florida, gives you just a little extra something just to see what he really thinks.

"I know I can make any throw on the field," Penix said this week. "If I feel I can make it, I'm going to throw it."

The Husky quarterback and his teammates (4-1 overall, 1-1 Pac-12) take their high-powered offense and head of confidence into Arizona State (1-4, 0-2) on Saturday afternoon in Tempe, ranking team-wise in the top 10 in the nation in total yardage (506.6 per game) and points scored (208). 

This game is important for the UW on a couple of quarterback fronts.

This will mark Penix's sixth game of the season, tying the most he's played in his five college campaigns, with four previously marked by season-ending injury at Indiana. It's a welcome milestone for the left-hander to match unscathed and then pass without incident against the Arizona Wildcats at home next week.

This also represents the opponent for which the previous UW starting quarterback, Dylan Morris, saw his career really begin to unravel. A year ago, he threw a 37-yard interception to Sun Devils linebacker Merlin Robertson for a touchdown that was the difference in a 35-30 Husky defeat. He followed that up at Colorado the next week with a catastrophic fumble on first-and-goal at the Buffaloes 3, leading to an 88-yard return for a score in a 20-17 loss. He's never started again.

Playing Arizona State in 90-degree temperatures in the desert, the Huskies need to make this a positive quarterback pivot game this time. Certainly the heat won't faze the Huskies' Florida-raised leader, who not only has been showing Morris and redshirt freshman Sam Huard how to get the starting job done properly, he's dared defenses to try and stop him. 

Penix enters this game as the nation's leader in passing yardage with 1,733, nine more than his nearest competitor in UTSA's 6-foot, 205-pound senior Frank Harris and 18 more than Mississippi State's interestingly named Will Rogers, a disciple of Mike Leach's Air Raid offense. No one else has reached the 1,700-yard barrier across the FBS landscape.

Offense through the season👇

•506.6 Total Yards/Game, 1st in PAC-12, 7th in FBS

•2,533 Total Yards, 1st in Pac-12, 7th in FBS

•208 Total Points Scored, 1st in Pac-12, 8th in FBS #NoLimits #PurpleReign @GrubbRyan pic.twitter.com/lbnXAa6i85

— Washington Football (@UW_Football) October 6, 2022

The Husky quarterback ranks fifth in touchdown passes with 16, three behind national co-leaders Drake Maye, a 6-foot-4, 220-pound redshirt freshman for North Carolina and a Tar Heel state native, and Rogers, who's a 6-foot-2, 216-pound junior and Mississippi native; two scores behind Ohio State's 6-foot-3, 218-pound junior C.J. Stroud, an imported Californian, and one shy of Western Kentucky's 6-foot-2, 230-pound Austin Reed, a graduate student and similarly a Florida native who previously played for Division II Western Florida and won a national championship there.

Penix is rated 13th nationally in completions per game, averaging 25, the same as former UW quarterback Jake Haener, who's currently injured at Fresno State, and Arizona's Jayden de Laura, who played for Washington State a year ago. First in complete passes is Mississippi State's Rogers, who averages 34 makes an outing.

The first-year UW quarterback starter is 22nd in passing efficiency at 166.16, far behind leader Max Duggan of TCU and his 202.18 success rate.

Penix finds himself much farther back in completion percentage, ranking 43rd at 65.4, with Michigan's J.J. McCarthy leading the country at 78.6 (66-84). Interestingly, Colorado State's Clay Millen, son of former Husky quarterback Hugh Millen, is fifth nationally in this category by completing 73.9 percent (68 of 92) of his passes.

Of course, Penix has thrown more than twice as many passes as those guys, with his season stat line reading 125 completions in 191 attempts for that 1,733 yards and those 16 touchdowns, with 3 picks.

Overcoming the disappointment of losing 40-32 to UCLA a week ago for the Huskies' first loss, Penix was further embraced by Seattle once he returned from California and was invited to throw out the first pitch at Monday's game for the playoff-bound Mariners. He was a baseball player, a pitcher and centerfielder, through his sophomore year of high school. Don't let Seattle's MLB team give him a tryout.

For now, Penix is a 300 hitter while he enjoys a Husky quarterback season for the ages so far and prepares to face a struggling Arizona State team that already has fired coach Herm Edwards and relies on a former University of Florida quarterback in Emory Jones. Penix hasn't dipped below that output so far, turning in games of 345, 337, 397, 309 and 345. Those are Sonny Sixkiller numbers.

Otherwise, this veteran quarterback will take his calm and collected self into Sun Devil Stadium and see if he can top it. He'll do it his way, too.

"We just want to make sure we [go] out there and execute and have fun," Penix said.

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