When Jedd Fisch took over as the head coach of the Washington Huskies in January, he had big shoes to fill, as well as plenty of holes on his roster to patch. After losing over 40 players from the 2023 roster that made a run to the national championship to either the NFL draft or the transfer portal, Fisch has done an admirable job getting the Huskies to bowl eligibility in their first season in the Big Ten.
But with a player that Fisch has already dubbed the future of the Washington program in quarterback Demond Williams Jr., he’s aiming much higher than bowl eligibility.
In an interview with CBS Sports’ Adam Breneman, Fisch described his plans to make Washington a consistent contender in the expanded College Football Playoff.
“The first thing we had to do was invest in the program,” Fisch said. “There hasn’t been a consistent head coach here for a bunch of years. There’s been four head coaches and three athletic directors in the last six years. When you have that type of turnover it’s very hard to get the program in a consistent place, you can have great years, but it’s hard to stay consistent.”
For Fisch, consistency comes down to two things: investment in facilities and high school recruiting.
“We put about $20 million [into upgraded facilities] in the 10 months we’ve been here, the second thing we did was invest in nutrition. That was a huge thing that I thought was super important, we doubled the nutrition in the one year we’ve been here,” he said. “Then we need to get big, we need to get big players in here…high school recruiting, it’s been kind of an inconsistent cycle when you have so many coaching changes…we feel like we have to get this thing grounded again and to do that, we really needed to commit to high school recruiting and we’re looking to sign 30 players [on early signing day].”