Commentary: The Huskies keep outplaying opponents. They finally broke through in win over Michigan.
SEATTLE – Up until the midway point in the fourth quarter Saturday, the working title for the Huskies’ 2024 football season was “Missed Opportunities.”
Their two losses were largely due to mental and physical gaffes that led to defeats at the hands of Washington State and Rutgers.
So with eight minutes left in the game against 10th-ranked Michigan, the Dawgs decided to create an opportunity — the specifics being Huskies edge Voi Tunuufi knocking the ball out of the quarterback’s hands and watching teammate Logan Sagapolu recover it on the Wolverines’ 32.
The score was 17-17 at the time. It was 24-17 Washington four plays later, and 27-17 by game’s end.
That forced fumble was quite possibly the most significant play of the season for UW (4-2, 2-1 Big Ten), which has outgained all six of its opponents this season. For a moment, it looked like the Huskies were going to give another one away. Instead, they gave the biggest Husky Stadium crowd in eight years a win they won’t soon forget.
“The two losses that we had, it felt like we just shot ourselves in the foot a lot, and just little mistakes that got us to that 3-2 [record]. We should have been 5-0,” Huskies receiver Giles Jackson said. “We could do anything we put our eyes on.”
There was no question about how Huskies fans felt when the clock hit 0:00 Saturday night. Students stormed the field in euphoria after Washington won its 18th straight home game — the program’s longest streak in over a century.
But one has to wonder how fans feel about the season as a whole? On one hand, the Huskies have looked like the better team in every game they’ve played. Penalties crushed them in their five-point loss to WSU, while missed field goals and other mistakes doomed them in a three-point loss to Rutgers, whom they outgained by 222 yards.
On the other hand, they truly could be 6-0. They probably should be 6-0. This, the team that just experienced the largest year-to-year personnel turnover in program history.
How good Michigan (4-2, 2-1) is has yet to be determined. The Wolverines have played three different quarterbacks this season and barely beat Minnesota last week. But Washington, for all the cringe moments it had in its two losses, hasn’t had a dud performance yet. Perhaps it is dud-proof?
Quarterback Will Rogers, after all, has posted at least 250 passing yards in five games, tallying 271 on Saturday. He was also interception-free before meeting Michigan. Give the Mississippi State transfer time to throw, and he’ll launch as pretty and as accurate a ball as anyone in the country.
But he did have a potentially crucial mistake in this one. The Huskies led Michigan 14-0 before the Wolverines changed QBs and scored 17 unanswered points. Washington tied the score early in the fourth, and was in Michigan territory on its next possession after forcing a three-and-out. That’s when Rogers threw his first pick of the year. Was a third straight loss coming?
It seemed more than likely in the moment. But five plays later, Tunuufi knocked the ball loose from quarterback Jack Tuttle’s hands, Sagapolu fell on it, and the momentum — and soon the game — belonged to the Huskies.
“We knew we had to do something with the ball, or something on defense in order to give our offense a chance,” Tunuufi said.
The Huskies gave, gave and gave in their previous two games. This was a moment in which they took. They took the ball away from Michigan, took advantage of their field position, and took a win from the team that beat them in the national championship game last January.
Washington coach Jedd Fisch tries not to put a higher premium on one opponent vs. another. But he recognized the magnitude of this victory in regards to the attention it brought his program. Maybe Washington hasn’t plunged the way some predicted it would after losing the core of its 14-1 team last season. Maybe the first six games of the Huskies’ season deserves far more respect than it does ridicule.
“I love it. I love beating Michigan. I love the idea that the University of Washington had an opportunity to play a big game on national TV, on NBC tonight, in prime-time and play an extremely high level of football,” said Fisch, whose team outgained Michigan 429 yards to 287. “I’m excited, but just like most things, I don’t look back on this stuff until the season is over.”
The Huskies will have at least six games before that day comes. Plenty of opportunities await, and they proved Saturday that they can seize them.