What They Said: Washington HC Jedd Fisch's pre-Michigan press conference

Opening Statement

Good Monday, excited about what’s ahead of us. Halfway point of the season, sitting in a good position on where we — health-wise, we’re getting healthier, which is good. I feel like we’re close to being able to have our full team, not there yet, but our guys had a good day of rest on Saturday after a Friday night game, and now we’re fully focused in on playing Michigan, going back to Ann Arbor, and it should be a great opportunity, great atmosphere, be 105,000, whatever it is, sold out, packed, which we know, and it looks like the weather will be good, and we’re excited about the opportunity. Looking back on the game against Rutgers, I thought we did a lot of good things.

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I thought that you look at 15 yards rushing in the second half, thought offensively, we drove right down the field to start the game, wound up getting stopped on the 20-yard line or so, and unfortunately missed a field goal, but then after a couple possessions, I think scored almost every possession we had except for the turnover on the one-yard line. Defensively, outside of the first touchdown, we’re giving up 12 points. I think we’re top ten in the country against the run.

So we’re getting to where we want to be. We’re not there yet by any means. We have a lot of work to do.

We have to really just continue to improve every time we go out there, but I certainly think for coming off of a game like Maryland and all the emotion, coming back and playing like we did and putting up whatever, 590 yards of offense and holding them to less than 20 points was all positives. So excited about moving forward, and now it’s time to focus in on Michigan.

On whether he will get Carver Willis, Zach Durfee or John Mills back this week

Yeah, there’s a chance. There’s a chance. I don’t know how much of a chance, but there’s a chance.

On whether he will have any insight to share with his team about playing at Michigan Stadium

Yeah, well, it’s a great atmosphere. I’ve had a chance to coach there for two years, and we won a lot of games there. We’re 20-4 in the two years that we were there, I think. And we had certainly opportunities to play in some of the biggest games, biggest rivalries at Michigan, and that was fun. It’s awesome. It’s an awesome place.

And it’s super cool that they sell out every game. They have unbelievable energy, and our guys are going to be excited about this opportunity. And I really believe that our team will show up and be fired up to be a part of something like a Washington-Michigan game at 12 on Fox and everything you could ask for.

On Jacob Manu’s status and the lawsuit he filed against the NCAA

Yeah, Jacob, we’ll make a decision again like we did last week. If we don’t know anything regarding his lawsuit, then we’ll decide this week on whether or not we’re going to use one of the two available Saturdays that we have left until the season comes to an end. We’ve used two games.

That means he’s got two games available of the next six, and then the postseason doesn’t count, so then he can play the entire postseason. My only comment on it is I think it’s crazy that you can get injured in October and you lose a year. You get injured in September, you have a year.

You have a nine-month injury, you could start the whole season. You have an 11-month injury, you have to make a decision each week on how you’re going to redshirt. But Jacob has been a part of our family now for five years.

Since I started recruiting him when he was a senior in high school, I told Jacob I will always do what’s best for him, and we will make sure that we don’t put him in a position where he misses out on opportunities through NIL. We don’t want to put him in a position where he misses out on opportunities through revenue share. We don’t want to put him in a situation where he misses out on opportunities for the NFL because of the fact that his injury happened on October 31st rather than October 17th.

If it happened October 17th last year, none of this would have been a discussion, or October 1st instead of October 17th, I should say. But it is, so we’ll see whatever happens with the courts, and if it works out for Jacob’s favor, then that will give us an opportunity to play him the rest of the way.

On potentially playing Manu in games and being deemed ineligible

Correct. Yeah, we don’t have any idea on a timeline, so we have to just treat it as he’s got two games left, and then we have to make a decision on which two of the next six that we want to play him in. That might mean play in one game and then miss four and then play in one, or it might mean don’t play until the end and wait and see.

It might mean, I don’t know. How high on a priority list is this Saturday’s game? Well, every game is so high on a priority list, right, that it’s crazy that we have to make this decision.

So we’re hopeful that we can get some answers, but we really don’t have them right now.

On how hard it’s been for Manu to sit out

Yeah, he went crazy. I didn’t allow him to have a helmet because I didn’t trust him. And then I made him take his pads off to make sure he was going to be fully dressed.

And I said, no, you’re not going to be fully dressed. No, I know you too well, and that is not going to be an option. So you can be fully dressed for warm-up, but you are not allowed to be fully dressed for the game.

You have to have no helmet and no pads, so there’s no question about you going in the game.

On what he’s afraid of with the potential of Manu playing

I just know him, and all of a sudden there’s ten guys out there for a play, or it’s like, give me a linebacker, and my man just wants to compete, or the game’s coming down to the last play, or whatever it might be. So he’s a special kid, and he wants to do what’s right and best, and he’s in a very tough situation right now, but he loves it at University of Washington, and he loves being a part of this program. And if he can’t play, if they don’t let him play more than the two games, then we’ll play two more games, and then the postseason, and then we’ll have him all year next year.

If they let him play more, then we’ll play more.

On Washington’s pass rush and the plan for Bryce Underwood

Yeah, I would say, first of all, it certainly got better. We had, I think, three sacks to end the game when the statistics were over. We had three sacks.

We had a good amount of pressures on the quarterback. They had too much time early in the game. Quarterback sat back there a little bit too much.

We talked about that. Hopefully, if we get Durfee back, I think Durfee was leading the country in quarterback pressures off of a four-man rush. So if he’s back, that’ll certainly help the situation.

I think that we’ll continue to look at different ways to generate pass rush, but also put our guys in the best possible position to be successful. And on top of that, I do believe that the way we stopped the run right now, keeping teams to 82 yards rushing, you can’t play it all. You can’t do it all.

And that’s a very good passing team, and that’s a team that has very good receivers and a good scheme. So we’ll continue to try to evolve as a pass-rushing unit, and we’ll continue to work to get better and better there. And on the same token, I do see the second half of the Maryland game, and then this game, certainly in the second half, the pass rush started showing up.

On Xe’ree Alexander and the linebacker room

Yeah, we gave him a game ball. He had eight tackles. He had a TFL.

He did a really good job both on special teams and on defense. He gives us the ability to rush the passer as an additional body in there, especially if Jacob comes back, then we can kind of move Xe’ree to different places. I thought he did a really nice job, though.

You know, there was a lot of good plays there, and he and Devin did a nice job, as did Xe’ree, who came in and played 15 plays, and we’ll be able to play him certainly more this week as well.

On whether the slow starts have concerned him

Yeah. You know, I would say this past one was kind of weird. I mean, they scored first, and then we drove right back down and then just missed a field goal, or it’s a 7-3, you know, first two possessions.

And then we wound up having some pretty bad field position after penalty, and then next thing you know, you’re down 10-0. What I love is the fact that our players didn’t blink. You know, there was no flinch.

There was no like, I can’t believe we’ve got to do this again. It wasn’t that. You know, it’s been 10-0.

It’s been 13-0 in the first half. I’m glad we scored to make it 10-7, and then once it’s 10-7, it’s just normal football. But, yeah, you’d always love to start fast and finish strong, but we talk to our team all the time that you don’t win games in the first quarter or the second quarter or the third quarter.

The games are decided at the end of the game when it’s all said and done, and where I’m most proud of when you can outscore your opponents 80-10 in the fourth quarter. It’s certainly a credit to the team’s resiliency as well as our strength and conditioning program.

On learning playing previously at 9:00 a.m. PST starts

Yeah, I want to be like the Seahawks and be on a nine-game road win streak. We’re on a two-game road win streak right now. So I talked to Coach Macdonald, and I’ve asked him a bunch of things, and we’ve talked a lot, and we adjusted our schedule when we played Maryland to make it similar to what the Seahawks do for a 4 o’clock kickoff, and we adjusted our schedule this week to make it similar to what the Seahawks do for their 10 a.m. kickoff, which is 1 p.m. Eastern. And we also have a better team than we brought a year ago. Right now we’re in our second year together. We’re not in our first.

We’re in the second year in the Big Ten, not our first. We’re in the second year of going through travel, not our first. We’re flying on a bigger plane.

We’re leaving at a different time on Thursday. We are giving our guys a different schedule leading up to the game. We’re practicing on Thursday morning.

We’re walking through on Friday outside. We’re doing things different, and the time is the time. I don’t look at it as a 9 a.m. start. I look at it as a 12 o’clock start, and wherever we are is what time the kickoff is. I was in the NFL for 14 years. We never once said this is a 10 a.m. kick or a 11 a.m. kick. The kick is when the time is, and the time is at 1 o’clock. It’s at 1 o’clock. The time is at 12, it’s at 12.

We’re going to do everything we can not to make the schedule, travel, body clock, any of those as reasons why we play well or not well. We want to do everything we can to eliminate distractions and make it just about the team.

On whether he spoke to Mike Macdonald about the Seahawks winning home games

I just talked to Coach. Coach Macdonald’s doing a fantastic job, and he was great this summer when we spent a lot of time together talking about some of the ideas, exchanging ideas of how they handled certain things.

On whether there was anything Macdonald said that resonated

No, I think the biggest thing we talked about was we moved our plane, we got a bigger plane, give our guys a little more space, and we moved our schedule back on Thursday, so we leave later than we did last year.

On the chances Zach Durfee plays on Saturday

We’ll see. We haven’t practiced yet, so hopefully high, but we’ll see.

On Demond Williams winning Big Ten Offensive Player of the Week

Third, right? I think he won his third because I thought he won the first. Didn’t he win the freshman?

Oh, Jonah won two. Devon’s won two. That’s pretty good.

We’ve won four. Okay, cool. I think what stood out is that he had 400 yards passing, 136 yards rushing, made great decisions with the ball.

I think he completed, what, 21 at 27 or something to that effect. So, once again, his completion percentage is extremely high. He averaged 19.5 yards per completion, 9-point-something yards. I think we averaged close to 10 yards per play. We had 60 plays and 590 yards. So, you know, everything that he’s continuing to do, he’s doing at a high level.

Unfortunately, we turned the ball over one time on the one-yard line, or we would have had an exceptionally clean game. And, you know, it was pretty fun to watch. It was pretty fun to watch.

Didn’t I see the Mariners had like 28? Like, they had almost an exceptionally clean game last night. So, we try to pride ourselves to be like them.

So, congratulations to the Mariners, and congratulations to Demond for winning his second offensive player of the week.

On his OL’s run blocking

I think, are you talking about when John Mills and Carver were playing, or are you talking about when we’ve made some changes due to injury? I think that they’ve done a really good job. I think the first two or three games of the season, we were over 200-something, close to 300 yards.

Yes, we had 190 yards, I think, this past week, which is pretty impressive. We, you know, just because DeMond got 130 yards, those were designed runs. Those weren’t scramble plays, except for one of them.

The rest of it were all off of designed runs for the quarterback and or for the runner. So, all of that goes into play in terms of our run game and the offensive line’s run game, blocking. So, I think that they’re doing a really good job.

Coach Switz has done a fantastic job in both the pass protection and the run game. He’s done a fantastic job getting the best out of those guys. I think the players have done an awesome job of embracing the coaching of Coach Switz.

And also, Geirean coming back has really helped the maturity. Carver coming back has helped the maturity. Max in year two has really helped.

The young guys, Champ and Pocky and John, have done a great job. And then you watch the way Drew has a party and Landon Hatchett have grown from last year to this year. It’s been a tremendous, really, increase in production and ability.

So, it’s been fun to watch it, but we’ve got our work cut out for us against Coach Martindale and Michigan. We know it’s going to be a very physical football game. They have an outstanding front.

They do a fantastic job. And we know that defensively, it’s going to be an extreme challenge. And then we know offensively, the skill guys, I know some of the guys that they have out there, we recruited.

Their quarterback is elite. Their offensive line coach, Moore, always does a fantastic job with their O-line. And they’re always well-known to have great backs and tight ends.

So, it’ll be a tremendous challenge as we play Michigan this week.

On whether he thinks his punter is slow with his style

I don’t know. I don’t know what they’ve sensed or not sensed. I know Coach Schiano goes after punts all the time. He’s well-known for that. I think they have more blocked punts over the course of a decade than anyone else. But we got it off.

We hit a 56-yarder. I think we’ve only punted this year 10 times, maybe, 8 times. So, our punt numbers are down.

So, hopefully we can continue to keep our punt numbers down. But we obviously will look at everything and see if we feel as if the operation needs any tweaking and or if we need to speed up or change our protections. Okay.

We’ll see you in Ann Arbor. Have a great week.