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.