Tag: washington huskies football

The Washington Huskies leaned heavily on star running back Jonah Coleman in their 26-21 victory over the USC Trojans, giving the junior a career-high 23 carries that he took for 104 yards and a touchdown. When they travel to Penn State to face off with the Nittany Lions in their annual White Out game, Jedd Fisch would be wise to implore a similar strategy.

Even though defensive coordinator Tom Allen’s unit ranks No. 5 in the Big Ten in rushing yards allowed, giving up an average of 103.3 yards per game, Penn State showed some cracks in its armor against Ohio State’s powerful rushing attack.

The Buckeyes put together a solid 4.4 yards per carry, a number Coleman is more than capable of replicating, while picking up 170 yards on 40 attempts. While Fisch won’t lean that heavily on the run, it will be an important factor in sustaining drives and taking some energy away from the raucous crowd, especially since Coleman is back at full health after dealing with some minor bumps and bruises.

“We needed that bye week for Jonah to get back to as healthy as he can be in the season,” Fisch said on Monday. “Where Jonah is now at physically overall and how he’s feeling, he could handle all 20 carries, and then of course at the end of the game, our goal is about 20 carries. He had 58 plays in the game, so not just the carries but in pass game. I know he only had two catches for 17 yards but overall he had a 58-play game. That’s a substantial amount of reps for a running back. But in the fourth quarter, at the end of the game, I wanted to make sure he was in there.”

If Fisch has a similar workload in mind for Coleman at Beaver Stadium, and the offensive line is able to execute its assignments against Penn State’s talented defensive front, the Huskies could find themselves in a tight battle in the fourth quarter.

[lawrence-related id=8027,7996,7975,7937]

Washington Huskies fans who are unable to make the lengthy journey to Penn State to take in the storied White Out gameor aren’t subscribed to NBC’s streaming service, Peacock, will have a unique opportunity to watch Saturday’s Big Ten matchup.

NBC Sports announced a first-of-its-kind partnership with IMAX to display the game in theaters around the country to bring fans as close to the action as possible.

“With more than 105,000 fans expected to be decked out in white and packing the iconic stadium in University Park, PA, the ‘White Out’ game is an annual tradition creating one of the most thrilling spectacles in college football. Fans can experience the unrivaled atmosphere of the game on IMAX® screens with the premium sound and crystal-clear visuals that only IMAX can deliver,” IMAX said in a press release.

For fans in Washington, the experience will be offered at seven IMAX screens around the state: Bellevue, Bellingham, Kent, Lacey, Lynnwood, Seattle, and Spokane.

A full list of screens can be found here.

Khmori House has been one of the biggest revelations for the Washington Huskies in 2024. Since making his first career start against Washington State in the Apple Cup, the freshman linebacker has been a critical part of defensive coordinator Steve Belichick’s unit.

He has tallied 26 tackles, 1 for loss, 3 pass breakups, and an interception so far in his first year, but has also made a name for himself thanks to his speed and athleticism. House was named Big Ten Freshman of the Week after Washington’s win over Northwestern and found his name on 247Sports’ Midseason True Freshman All-America list.

However, his impact has gone far beyond the stat sheet.

“I would say his best trait is his instincts,” Fisch said on Monday. “He’s so quick to diagnose plays that then he can be explosive because he’s fast. You could clearly see that on the last play on the goal line. Instinctively, he was able to diagnose the play and then find an open gap that he could rush through. Throughout spring ball, you started seeing the energy and passion that he played with, and then in training camp is when I would say we decided as a staff that let’s not be afraid to throw a true freshman in the games and kind of like what we did with Jacob Manu back at Arizona.”

House has quickly become an expert at shooting gaps with his speed and disrupting plays, and showed how much of an impact he can make with a fourth and goal stop of USC running back Woody Marks in Washington’s 26-21 win over the Trojans on a pressure that Belichick said is aptly named, “Bring the House.”

While the former three-star recruit has improved in every area of his game since he arrived on campus, he singled out one thing that has helped him adjust to the college level.

“Details,” he said. “Just being a detailed player, [linebackers coach Robert] Bala has really emphasized that to me. I used to come out and rely on my athleticism, but in college football and wanting to be a pro, you’ve got to be a detailed linebacker. It’s the little things like setting the edge, hitting the C gap, striking the primary or secondary that [set you apart].”

At Penn State, those details will be critical as the Huskies face the Big Ten’s No. 4 offense, as the Nittany Lions average 439.5 yards per game behind quarterback Drew Allar, running back Nicholas Singleton, and tight end Tyler Warren.

The Washington Huskies are preparing for one of college football’s most famous traditions, Penn State’s annual White Out game. When they take the field inside Beaver Stadium on Saturday, they’ll be met by nearly 110,000 Nittany Lions fans, all dressed in white and providing one of the nation’s most hostile environments.

Jedd Fisch knows this. He’s coached in it while with the Michigan Wolverines in 2015. Although his team lost that day, he knows a thing or two about what it takes to prepare for that environment and has shared that with his team.

“I’m not concerned about it,” he said. “I showed the guys what it looks like…I talked about that a little bit. I showed them some clips of the energy and passion to expect, but on the same token, we’ve had really great crowds in every game we’ve played this year. Iowa was sold out, Indiana was sold out. It’s going to be a sellout with double the amount of people as those groups, but in the same token, we’ve just got to go play ball and see if we can play the best game we’ve played all year.”

But that doesn’t mean Fisch isn’t preparing his players for the noise. As fans and media filed into Alaska Airlines Arena on Tuesday night to watch coach Danny Sprinkle’s team start the season with a 79-73 victory over UC Davis, music was blasting from inside Husky Stadium during practice.

Fisch’s team is 0-4 away from home this season and will be walking into a very tough place to play on Saturday, but they will be prepared and feel confident they can operate in the environment.

“I don’t think it’s a worry at all,” linebacker Carson Bruener said. “It’s something where, for me personally, I love playing in hostile environments. I love playing in big stadiums; big moments are something I look forward to, they’re something I feel like I can elevate my game with.”

“I feel like I can speak for the whole defense on this as well. I feel like it doesn’t affect us, and we can almost use that crowd energy and noise to our advantage in a way. As soon as you make a play and you hear 100,000 people go silent, that’s almost as good as making a play here at Husky Stadium and hearing 72,000 people screaming.”

Everything is won and lost in the trenches in the Big Ten, and as Jedd Fisch continues to build the Washington Huskies to compete with some of the conference’s top teams, the offensive line has shown it has the most room for improvement. But in a 26-21 win over USC, the Huskies showed some promising building blocks up front.

Sophomore Landen Hatchett earned his second career start and first at right guard, while redshirt freshman Kahlee Tafai made his first career start at left tackle. Even though they didn’t necessarily the toughest challenge in a poor USC pass rush, Washington’s offensive line performed admirably, not allowing any sacks after letting up a Big Ten-worst 11 in October.

With no changes expected among the starting five when the Huskies travel to Penn State, they’ll face a much stronger pass rush, led by a projected first-round pick, edge rusher Abdul Carter. But Washington’s coaching staff liked what it saw from its two young starters and has faith in them going forward.

“I thought he had a really nice game overall,” Fisch said of Hatchett, who had played left guard and center coming into Saturday but moved to the right side due to a minor injury to Enokk Vimahi.

“We didn’t feel like Enokk was able to go 70 plays at right guard,” Fisch continued. “Based on where he was at, we felt like Landen would be the right person to land there…I think Landen had his best game and the game where he played the most amount of reps.”

The former four-star recruit is coming off a knee injury that put his status in doubt for the start of the season, but he has played in every game and been one of Washington’s more reliable linemen in what has been a shaky group at times. If Hatchett and his 2023 classmate Tafai can both continue to improve, they could be excellent building blocks for the rest of the season and into 2025, when quarterback Demond Williams Jr. assumes the starting job.

“For his first start, it was a solid performance,” offensive coordinator Brennan Carroll said of Tafai. “He had some mental errors that he can clean up, and he knows he has to go out there and not get the quarterback hit too much, that’s a good way to get started. He was solid in the run game; he had some technique and fundamental things that he can clean up and make that go better for us, but he had a solid first time out there.”

For a redshirt freshman in his first start, that’s good enough to get the job done, but as Fisch has continued to emphasize, everything his coaching staff is doing this year is about building for the future, and that will start up front.

Coach Jedd Fisch has already anointed quarterback Demond Williams Jr. as the future face of the Washington Huskies, and starter Will Rogers is doing everything he can to ensure the freshman is prepared when he steps into the full-time starting role in 2025.

Fisch has spoken at length about the bond Williams and Rogers have formed over the season, stating that the two are rarely spotted without each other at the team facility.

The head coach offered some extra insight to former Michigan All-American tight end Jake Butt, who played for Fisch in 2015 and 2016. Butt was on the call of Washington’s 26-21 win over USC and shared what his former coach told him during their pregame meeting on the Locked On Huskies Podcast.

“Will has established himself as a leader in this program,” Butt said. “Obviously, he’s played a ton of football and has leaned into Jedd Fisch’s plan, this team, and this program, and what we were told this week is that Jedd meets with the quarterbacks each as individuals.”

“He said that Will Rogers, unprovoked, told Jedd, ‘Hey, listen, in these next few weeks, I’m the leader, but Demond has to take over this leadership role.’ He said he needs to move to the side a little bit, and ‘we,’ meaning Rogers, Fisch, and Washington’s coaching staff, have to let Demond start to lead and give him some of those opportunities.”

For a player with 14,599 passing yards and 107 touchdowns under his belt, that’s an empowering move from Rogers, who has embraced his role on a rebuilding team, even though that might not be what he signed up for when he originally committed to Washington.

“For a guy in Will Rogers who could get some shots at the NFL, but who knows, this could very well be the last few quarters of his football career, and he’s thinking about the next guy in a program he didn’t commit to out of college. Think about the loyalty, maturity, and leadership there.”

Voi Tunuufi has been a revelation for the Washington Huskies in many ways during the 2024 season. Even though the senior defensive lineman has always been a reliable source of havoc in the backfield of opposing offenses, he’s taken it to a new level under defensive coordinator Steve Belichick.

He’s also filled in on the offensive side when needed, setting the tone for the Huskies as a fullback. On Monday, Jedd Fisch awarded him with Washington’s highest postgame honor, naming him the team’s Dawg of the Week.

“It’s somebody that represents this program on and off the field,” Fisch said earlier in the season. “Somebody that has done an incredible job at coming in every day and acting like a pro, behaving like a pro, and preparing like a pro. When we talk about it with our guys and when you get that award, it means you’ve done things outside of the game and inside the playing field.”

That perfectly encapsulates the always enthusiastic Tunuufi, who, when interacting with him outside of the lines, is a respectful personality, always willing to greet you with a fist bump and ask you how your day’s going. But once he steps inside the lines, he turns into a different person.

Against USC, Tunuufi tallied 5 tackles in Washington’s 26-21 win and added 2 pressures on quarterback Miller Moss while lining up in his signature spot along the defensive line, everywhere. He also displayed the toughness that Jedd Fisch said defined his team’s victory.

Early in the game, it looked like Tunuufi might’ve been shaken up after colliding with fellow pass rusher Isaiah Ward while pressuring Moss, but he was able to remain in the game. He has been one of the biggest benefactors of Belichick’s new scheme and has been a vital contributor along Washington’s defensive front all season long, totaling 26 tackles and 1.5 sacks in 2024.

[lawrence-related id=7224,6839,5365]

After Saturday’s 26-21 win over USC, Carson Bruener was asked if the game was the best he’s ever played.

“Sh–, it might be,” Bruener said with a smile.

The Big Ten office agreed, awarding the senior linebacker with the conference’s Defensive Player of the Week award on Monday. It’s Bruener’s second time winning a weekly conference honor – he was the Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Week as a redshirt freshman after racking up 16 tackles, 1.5 sacks, and a forced fumble against Stanford in 2021.

Bruener didn’t quite hit those highs on Saturday, but his impact was much larger in coverage than as a rusher this time around. The senior had 12 tackles, 2 pass breakups, and 2 interceptions, including a crucial fourth quarter play to halt USC’s momentum up 21-20.

Washington scored on the ensuing drive to sew up the 26-21 win, but not before Bruener and the defense had to make one final stop to end the game. On that drive, the Huskies were forced to use a timeout to get Bruener to the sideline after USC wide receiver Makai Lemon hit him in the lower leg. But Bruener returned after the break, holding down the middle of the field while sophomore edge rusher Lance Holtzclaw chased down Trojans quarterback Miller Moss to end the game.

Bruener’s performance also garnered him Defensive Breakout Player of the Week honors from the East-West Shrine Bowl.

[lawrence-related id=7975,7937,7922,7919]