New UW Coach Fisch Wants to Build Through High School Recruiting
If Jedd Fisch had his way, the new Washington Husky football coach would be out recruiting trail almost immediately.
However, Fisch still has a handful of coaching hires to solidify before looking for future players.
Once his UW staff is filled out, the coach's main focus will be to build a roster in a style similar to an NFL team: find talent and develop for sustained success.
To Fisch, signing players out of high school is akin to drafting players. In the new age world of college football, schools have utilized the transfer portal in a similar fashion to free agency.
Yet Fisch says the portal can't be the foundation for how his roster is constructed.
"When you've coached in the NFL for a bunch of years, you learn that you want to build your team through the draft," Fisch said during his introductory press conference on Tuesday.
During his three seasons in Tucson, the number of transfer additions went down each year, peaking in his first signing class with the addition of 15 players through that route.
In the last two recruiting classes, the Wildcats brought in 17 combined — nine in 2022 and eight in 2023.
The number of high school recruits also increased with each of his three classes and with it the star qualify of the players coming in to the Wildcats' program multiplied.
Arizona didn't sign a single 4-star recruit in Fisch's first recruiting class in '21, due in part to the program finishing 0-5 under former coach Kevin Sumlin and the new guy having less than two months to sign players.
Despite going 1-11 in his first season in 2021 the program signed six 4-star recruits — based on 247sports' rankings — including wide receiver Tetairoa McMillan, the No. 37 overall recruit in the country out of Servite High School in Southern California.
Fisch also landed McMillan's high school teammate and quarterback, Noah Fifita, in the same class along with 3-star running back Jonah Coleman from Stockton, California. Coleman this week entered the transfer portal.
All three players and many more symbolize why the Huskies' new coach wants to focus a majority of his efforts on signing and developing high school players.
It works, and it's sustainable.
With the resources Fisch will have at the UW, he has no reason to think he can't get the same or a higher level of talent to join him in Seattle.
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