Jedd Fisch previews Washington's complete roster overhaul
Washington announced Jedd Fisch as their new head football coach on Sunday following former Huskies head man Kalen DeBoer moving on to Alabama.
New head coaches are typically challenged with roster and staff turnover upon their arrival to a new destination, but in today’s version of college football, roster turnover is more frequent than ever. Which led to Fisch being asked about what’s ahead of him in the next few weeks in terms of recruiting in his introductory press conference.
“Well it’s certainly an interesting situation here because I believe right now there’s 17 players in the portal from this roster. There’s nine players or 10 players that have declared for the NFL Draft, you probably have the most amount of players that are gonna get drafted in the NFL will probably come from the University of Washington, this year’s draft. So we know it’s gonna be a completely different team in 2024 than what the community saw in 2023,” Fisch explained.
DeBoer helped lead Washington to the national championship game this past season behind an undefeated regular season record and a roster littered with veteran talent.
Some of that talent will go to the NFL, some to other schools, and others can still decide to return to Washington under Fisch with their names currently in the transfer portal. All of that paired with Fisch being tasked with recruiting new players at the high school level and at the college level through the transfer puts quite a lot on his plate.
“It’s our job to be able to put together the best product and it’s out job to do everything we possibly can in what has become a very strange college football calendar,” Fisch said. “The transfer portal has closed, in regards to the next time it opens in April, the early signing date has almost caused 90% of the high school students to sign early. So the availability of scholarship players is gonna be interesting to say the least.”
The month of December has become extremely challenging for head coaches as they balance bowl games, staff and roster turnover, and Early Signing Day. But January also comes with challenges as well, particularly for new head coaches like Fisch, who plans on keeping the focus on building the Washington program for the long haul.
“But what we have to do is, we don’t just recruit for one year, we recruit for the eternity of college football. We’re gonna recruit for a program that we’re gonna go out here tomorrow or the next day and we’re gonna build a ’25 class to try to make it the best possible recruiting class it can possibly be,” Fisch explained. “And then we’re gonna see what happens over the course of these next couple weeks, I’m hoping to retain this team the best we can.”
The rise in prominence of the transfer portal does allow new head coaches to quickly build a roster with more experienced players. But balancing with that bringing in and developing high school players for the future is an equilibrium that all coaches across the country are looking to achieve.
There’s no doubt that the Huskies will look to maintain their standard and remain a powerhouse ahead of the 2024 season. But Fisch has also proven he can start from the ground up, with Arizona having one win his first season at the helm in 2021 and 10 wins this past season in his final year as the Wildcats head coach.
“And then if there’re other available players that are in the portal, then we’re gonna look at those as well. But what it comes down to is we want to maniacally recruit daily for as long as we are here, and we are gonna recruit the ’25 class, the ’26 class, the 27′ class, the 28′ class and continue to try to build a roster that we can all be very proud of,” Fisch concluded.