Penix Has Sunday Moment Worth Repeating on Saturdays
It was just two players, one pass and a Sunday morning, but it added up to enough to make offseason imaginations run wild.
Holding onto the football, Michael Penix Jr., the new University of Washington quarterback by way of Indiana, turned to his right, did a full spin, set up and effortlessly launched one left-handed up the right sideline.
Fifty yards away, Husky wide receiver Jalen McMillan caught the ball on the dead run and kept going.
Of course, someone captured all of this on video from the Dempsey Center.
Should something like this happen in six months, say against Michigan State with a full complement of players on the field and every seat taken in Husky Stadium, the cascading roar will be heard from Vancouver, B.C., to Portland, Oregon.
A fifth-year junior, the 6-foot-3, 218-pound Penix, of course, still has to be beat out Dylan Morris and Sam Huard, the UW's returning sophomore and redshirt freshman QBs, for the starting job.
Yet the new Kalen DeBoer staff already knows what Penix is all about — DeBoer and Penix were together at Indiana as offensive coordinator and QB in 2019 — while these offensive coaches still need to get acquainted with the talents of Morris and Huard.
This will be sort of like a reverse quarterback tryout for the upcoming Husky spring practice, where the newcomer has an edge over the holdover players based on familiarity.
Penix, it should be noted, does this sort of thing long-ball thing on Saturdays when it's real time.
The Florida native let loose with a career-long, 75-yard touchdown pass to Indiana's Nick Westbrook in a 2019 game against Ball State when he was just a sophomore.
In 2020, Penix threw 63- and 56-yard scoring passes to Ty Fryfogle in the same game at Ohio State, and a 61-yard TD strike to Fryfogle at Michigan State, with all of this contributing to him being named the second-team All-Big Ten quarterback.
Morris' longest scoring throw came in the last Husky game he played last fall, a 55-yarder to Ja'Lynn Polk, while Huard, the former 5-star recruit, has just a solitary scoring pass in his brief UW career of 16 yards to Rome Odunze against WSU in the Apple Cup.
The position competition in April certainly will be worth watching.
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