What a difference a year makes—all of a sudden it’s fun again to go to a game at Alaska Airlines Husky Stadium. Scoring 40 points in Week 1 and 52 this past Saturday makes me feel a whole lot better than this time last year when Washington scored a single TD against Montana and then spotted their Week-2 opponent a 17 point lead before going on a five minute, 15 play, 72 yard drive in the 2nd half down to the 10 yard line where, after a 2 yard run, a sack, and an incompletion settled for the only reliable source of scoring they had last year—their Place Kicker Peyton Henry. We’ll certainly find out how good they really are next week when they host No. 11 Michigan State. But for now, it’s been a lot of fun and a big relief.
This past Saturday the Michael Penix Jr. show continued as he connected on about 75% of his passes for 337 yards and 2 TD’s in a 52-6 scorching of Portland State. Combined with his backups, Washington completed 23-of-33 for 376 total yards in the air compared to just 50 for the Vikings. The totals were equally uneven in the running game with the Huskies rushing 40 times for 241 yards and 5 TD’s against just 81 yards on the ground by Portland State. On the other side of the ball the Husky defense logged 49 tackles, 4 sacks, and six tackles for loss. Washington had 20 more 1st Downs, 486 more Total Yards, were successful on their 3rd down attempts 70% of the time, and made their only 4th down attempt.