Penix and the Huskies love to go the distance

Washington's pinpoint passing game was just enough to beat Texas in the CFP semifinals.

Michael Penix

The safest thing Michael Penix Jr. can do is throw the football 50 yards down the sideline. It is Washington’s victory formation. It is certainly the Huskies’ definition of ball security, because when Penix fires it, Rome Odunze or another receiver has little choice but to catch it.

Offhand it’s difficult to recall a college quarterback who threw such unerring drones so far downfield. Joe Burrow was that way in his final year at LSU, but he was leading one of the most talented offenses in the game’s history. Carson Palmer could beat people through remote control when he was at USC, back in the early 2000s. Penix is the natural extension of all that. Combine his pinpointed game with his strength, instantaneous release and shiftiness in the pocket, and Washington has transformed from a rusted-out house to the verge of a College Football Playoff championship in only two seasons.

That game will be against Michigan on Jan. 8, a battle of unbeatens that will ring out the four-team CFP era. The Huskies set it up by beating Texas 37-31 in the Sugar Bowl, although they nearly beat themselves. They led by nine points with 2:34 left, held Texas to a field goal, recovered an onside kick, and then got sucked through the looking glass. After the Huskies made Texas call its final time outs, running back Dillon Johnson reinjured his foot, and that caused a clock stoppage and forced them to punt. When they did, Keith Reynolds interfered with the fair catch and set up Texas on its own 31.

So the Longhorns somehow had a chance to win with :45 left, and Quinn Ewers nearly pulled it off. It took a pass breakup by Elijah Jackson in the end zone to save it to rescue Washington from the land of Van De Velde. But the Huskies often walk the tightrope, which is why they’re usually the underdog in the biggest games. They’re still standing.

By then, Penix had hit 28 passes in 39 attempts for 430 yards, second most in CFP annals behind Burrow, and two touchdowns. No sacks, no picks, 11 yards per attempt. Odunze caught six for 125, Ja’Lynn Polk five for 122. For the season Penix was intercepted nine times in 307 attempts and was sacked 11 times, even though he is disinclined to run. His longest run of the year was 11 yards until he topped it against Texas. Nine different Washington receivers caught at least one pass for 25 or more yards in the ‘23 season. That means Penix is not just completing passes but commanding them, that the receivers don’t have to stop and reach and kneel to make a grab, that everything is catch-and-go.

That isn’t all Washington does. Johnson has been a heart-and-soul running back, and if he can’t play against Michigan, that’s a problem. The offensive line earned the Joe Moore award as the nation’s best. Braden Trice is a beastly pass rusher. The rest of the defense plays a bend-and-sometimes-break style, but it always has managed one more tackle or deflection than the other guys.

Mostly the Huskies are a stew of transfers that has found a physical and spiritual synchronicity, a testament to Kalen DeBoer and his coaching staff. Two years ago USC hired Lincoln Riley while the trumpets sounded and the angels sang. At about the same time Washington hired DeBoer (who?) from Fresno State (where?). As it turned out, he was the right man for the job because he had been Penix’s offensive coordinator at Indiana. We’ll see what happens when Penix leaves, but remember that Fresno State won at UCLA when DeBoer was the Bulldogs’ coach, with Jake Haener limping around as the quarterback. It might also be worth remembering that Jennifer Cohen was the athletic director who hired DeBoer at Washington, and she now runs the show at USC.

Penix is an example of football’s disruptions and detours. He had two ACL tears when he was at Indiana. Before that he was promised a ride at Tennessee but when Jeremy Pruitt became the coach he pulled the offer (Pruitt is no longer the coach). A Tennessee assistant coach, Nick Sheridan, had just come to Indiana and still had Penix’s number.

And before that, Penix had to transfer from one Tampa high school to another because the new coach went to the Wing-T offense. He put up 61 touchdowns and six interceptions at Tampa Bay Technical, That came as no surprise to his father Michael, who told Sports Illustrated that Junior literally took the first steps of his life in an end zone.

“There were times we created some pressure,” said Steve Sarkisian, the Texas coach, ‘but we couldn’t get him on the ground. And that was the most frustrating part. He (Penix) was elusive in the pocket. And it just kind of felt like every time they threw it, and we were in pretty good coverage, they made the play.”

This followed the carefully arranged Ratings Bowl, in which Alabama and Michigan gathered in Pasadena on another gorgeous Jan. 1 and tried to consume all of the day’s oxygen. Unfortunately this caused several hiccups.

The game started with J.J. McCarthy throwing an interception that was disallowed because Alabama’s Caleb Downs came from out of bounds to make it. This led to a parade of muffs, fumbles, ineffectual tackling and, of course, a boffo finish, with Blake Corum scoring in overtime and then Jalen Milroe getting stopped on a fourth-down quarterback draw.

That gave the Wolverines a 27-20 win, at which point several players talked about the “adversity” they’d overcome. Message from Earth: Injuries are adversity. Campus shootings, like the one at Virginia in 2022, are adversity. Getting caught cheating is not adversity. It’s similar to Bernie Madoff claiming he was a victim of adversity, for example.

What Michigan did was win the game in the pit, which it couldn’t do in its previous two CFP excursions. It sacked Milroe six times, held the Crimson Tide to 288 yards, and had 10 tackles for loss.

Yet Alabama had a golden chance to win with 1:34 left and the score tied. Instead, Milroe missed two passes and the Tide had to punt with :54 left. And then Michigan’s Jake Thaw muffed that punt at his own goal line and nearly won it for Alabama with a safety.

Either McCarthy or Penix will be introduced to defeat in Houston on Monday, for the first time this season. The Wolverines shouldn’t be fooled by the roof on the stadium. Washington played indoors in New Orleans, too. Footballs rained anyway.