Husky Rushing Effort Was Worst in 14 Seasons

The UW finished with -3 yards, which was the worst for the program in several seasons.

Brian Bonner Jr. goes down on a night the UW rushed for -3 yards against Iowa. | Dave Sizer photo

On his team's very first offensive play against Iowa, University of Washington running back Brian Bonner Jr. accepted a handoff and picked his way through the line for a 4-yard gain, which seemed promising enough.

However if the typically late-arriving UW fans knew what was coming thereafter while settling into their seats on a chilly evening in Montlake, they might gone directly home from their tail-gating festivities.

At the end of a rather unspectacular showing in a 41-24 loss to the Hawkeyes on Friday night, the Huskies had come up with a stark -3 yards rushing -- their lowest total over 163 games covering 14 seasons.

"We have to run the football or we'll be in for big-time challenges throughout the rest of the way," UW coach Jedd Fisch said ominously in his postgame media session.

Landen Hatchett played for the first time against Iowa after recovering from a broken wrist. | Dave Sizer photo

The Huskies' previous worst rushing total was -5 yards in a 53-24 loss to Arizona State in Tempe in 2013, six games before Steve Sarkisian resigned from his five-year run as the UW coach and left for USC.

Bishop Sankey entered that game as the leading FBS rusher in the country, averaging 149,8 yards per game, and was held to 22 yards in 13 carries.

People heavily criticized Sark for that tepid performance, suggesting he had been given more than enough time to fix the often hopeless mess that Tyrone Willingham had created before him as the previous coach.

Fans currently are all over Fisch for his team's inability to run the football in any respectable manner, unwilling to cut him much slack even with four UW running backs out with injuries.

Everyone knows if you can't run the football with a certain level of proficiency, you're just not going to win much at all on the top college level.

Consider that Jimmy Lake's UW team that finished 4-8 and with him out of a job after eight games in 2021 had very little to show in rushing yards. It was a season-long issue that was never solved.

Those Huskies couldn't top the 100-yard rushing mark in nine of their 12 games, with a season low of 10 yards on the ground in a 40-13 defeat to Washington State in the Apple Cup. They opened with a paltry 65 yards in a 13-7 upset loss to Montana, a Big Sky team.

Quarterback Demond Williams Jr. draws a crowd of Iowa Hawkeyes. | Dave Sizer photo

So far this season, the UW has rushed for 134, 107, 157, 40 and 116 yards before bottoming out against Iowa with that -3 amount.

Against Iowa, the Husky ground game was so inefficent Bonner and his fellow running back Trey Cooley ran the ball just 12 times for 19 yards, with a long run of 5. Quarterbacks Demond Williams Jr. and Elijah Brown combined for 13 carries and -22 yards.

"I don't know if we will get any running backs back for the rest of the season," Fisch said. "We're still waiting and seeing on one. That's where we're at with the running-back position right now."

It's not a good place to be either.