Year Later, Huskies and Big Sky Return to the Scene of the Crime

Kalen DeBoer said it is important for him always to be honest with his University of Washington football team. He'll never overhype or undersell an opponent.

Keeping that in mind, the first-year Huskies coach might want to share with his players that they are a 27-point favorite over Portland State on Saturday and should act like it.

That they are playing a representative of the Big Sky Conference, a geographically accessible but athletically unequal opponent.

That until last year, the UW hadn't lost to one of its lower-tier neighbors since 1920 (to Idaho) when the football team still answered to the Sun Dodgers and Husky Stadium was being nailed together.

That until last September, the Huskies had lost just three times to these teams that now make up the Big Sky in 65 outings over six decades. That it's never fair when the UW invites one of these brave but overmatched teams to town.

And, of course, 12 months ago the inexplicable happened: Montana 13, Washington 7.

That was precisely a year and six days ago. The wounds are still fresh. The embarrassment still cogent. Grizzlies fans will forever gloat over the improbability of it all, watching their team celebrate as if it had won an FCS championship game or beaten Montana State in triple overtime in the snow.

The damage done by the Griz in that that 2021 season-opening outing to the UW showed up in far more places than the scoreboard.

Jimmy Lake coached only eight more Husky football games following that debacle. Same with offensive coordinator John Donovan. Everyone else on the staff except offensive-line coach Scott Huff departed 11 games later, and Huff's survival has been one of those modern-day Montlake miracles.

Want excuses?

After the first snap, the Huskies played without all of their starting wide receivers.

That was it.

Otherwise, there was absolutely no excuse for what happened. The UW was supposed to be a run-first football team and couldn't rush the ball with any success at all. It got manhandled up front by Montana. It got out-coached by former Husky assistant Bobby Hauck. It got beat up physically and emotionally.

Fast forward to the DeBoer era now in play and, while the talent level might be slightly improved, the Husky attitude appears a whole lot better.

In a one-game sampling, the UW came out and got an interception on the first play, converted a pair of fourth-down conversions and kept the pressure on throughout last Saturday's season-opening 45-20 victory over Kent State from the Mid-American Conference, which is a notable step up over the Big Sky. The new Huskies coach has them thinking gas pedal all the time.

"What I really want from the team, and I think they did a really good job, is you've got to go get it," DeBoer said after beating the MAC squad. "You have to got take it from people. We didn't sit there and let things happen to us. We went out and took it right from the get-go."

As these teams line up for a 1 p.m. kickoff, the Huskies have a pair of Big Sky transfers on the roster to help with the team rebound in UC Davis cornerback Jordan Perryman and Idaho State punter Kevin Ryan. Oddly enough, neither player likely will get on the filed against Portland State because Perryman suffered a leg injury in the opener, which looked a lot like a hamstring tear the way he grabbed at it, and Ryan, a 45.6-yard punter last season, surprisingly got beat out.

Perryman remembers seeing the Montana-UW outcome and being surprised yet pleased for the Big Sky.

On the other side, the Vikings have a pair of former UW players on their roster in wide receiver/kick returner Marquis Spiker and offensive guard Logan Bruce, but neither appeared in their season-opening 21-17 loss to San Jose State.

The Huskies enter the matchup with a 59-4-3 record against these teams that now compose the Big Sky that goes as follows: Montana 16-2-1, Idaho 36-2-2, Eastern Washington 3-0, Portland State 2-0, Idaho State 1-0 and Sacramento State 1-0.

Barring any sort of sudden realignment or reorganization requirement that might come up to bar these sort of warm-up contests in the future, the UW is scheduled to play four Big Sky teams over the next six seasons in Weber State in 2024, UC Davis in 2025 and Eastern in 2026 and 2028.

DeBoer likely won't permit the Huskies to stumble to any of them. That Montana outcome was a once-in-a-century phenomenon. Portland State should be new fodder in the wake of a determined attitude adjustment.

"You can't just let the game come to you all the time," the coach said. "That word attack is what I use most of the time. I love that word."

Beats "Big Sky loss" for sure.

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