Inside The Huskies

UW Coach Insists Late Evans TD Catch Was Unintentional

Jedd Fisch said the Huskies were only trying to get a first down on the play.
Dan Raley|
Omari Evans had a 59-yard touchdown catch in his Husky debut.
Omari Evans had a 59-yard touchdown catch in his Husky debut. | Skylar Lin Visual

Some people accused the University of Washington football team of pouring it on against rival Washington State in the Apple Cup.

Husky fans even shared in this sentiment.

With the game inside the final three minutes and the UW rolling along with a comfortable four-touchdown advantage, quarterback Demond Williams Jr. took the snap, took a look around and then sent a high-arcing pass to Penn State transfer Omari Evans, who turned it into a 59-yard touchdown catch in his Husky debut.

However, UW coach Jedd Fisch said going for broke late in his team's 59-24 victory was not the plan.

"Omari's long pass just happened to be a coverage breakdown," Fisch said. "We were running a little bubble play just to get a first down on third-and-2."

Yet the first two Husky options for a short-range pass each drew double coverage from WSU.

Consequently, the Cougars secondary let Evans slip behind it and Williams found him wide-open 10 yards from the nearest defender.

Evans had to wait for the pass to arrive and he caught it while backpedaling at the WSU 30. That pause still didn't permit any defensive back to get a hand on him, with four different players giving chase.

"There was nothing designed there to make it anything more than what it was," Fisch said. "He was just the third read of a corner route and wound up getting the ball."

Evans, who caught 30 passes for 564 yards and 7 touchdowns in three years with Penn State, missed the first two Husky games this season because of injuries. When able, he might be the UW's fastest receiver.

His longest catch for the Nittany Lions went for 60 yards against Michigan State in 2023 but didn't find the end zone. He scored on a 59-yard reception against Kent State a year ago.

While Fisch is happy to have another experienced pass-catcher in the mix -- Evans started six of 16 Penn State games in 2024 -- the coach maintained his receiver rotation won't change from the current starting trio of junior Denzel Boston and freshmen Dezmen Roebuck and Raiden Vines-Bright.

So far this season, It's almost as if the UW offense is so good, it can't help but score. The Huskies put points on the board in nine of their 10 possessions against WSU, failing to reach the end zone only when Williams took a knee to end the game.

Again, the final TD by Evans wasn't planned, wasn't actively pursued, the Husky coach said.

"It was nothing we were expecting to have happen," Fisch said. "If you looked at it, you were surprised the corner route was there. It was kind of a fluke."

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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