Ten Years Removed From UW Football's First CFP Appearance

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Ten years ago, the Washington football program was on the cusp of a transformative era under coach Chris Petersen.

Going into the 2016 season, Petersen's third at the helm, the former Boise State coach was 15-12 overall with a .500 record in bowl games and an offense that, at least through much of fall camp, had several questions.

As it turned out, a strong Huskies defense shut down a high-octane offense led by quarterback Jake Browning and running back Myles Gaskin. Browning threw 43 touchdowns—the second-most in college football in a season that also featured Patrick Mahomes, Deshaun Watson, and Baker Mayfield among others—which remains a UW record on the way to the school's first College Football Playoff appearance.

In the past decade, no quarterback has come near Browning's 12,296 career passing yards and 94 touchdown passes. The same goes for Gaskin's school record 5,323 rushing yards, 57 rushing touchdowns, and 945 carries from 2015-18, a pace of consistency hard to match in this new era of college football.

Michael Penix Jr. improved Browning's playoff berth with a Sugar Bowl win over the Texas Longhorns in 2023 en route to the program's first national championship appearance in the College Football Playoff era under former coach Kalen DeBoer. However, that feels long ago in contrast to the current rendition of the Huskies, who have aspirations of a third CFP berth in Jedd Fisch's third season in Seattle but still have to prove it in 2026.

Fisch has nearly the exact same record Petersen held coming into his third season as UW's head coach in 2016, before he went on to win at least ten games over each of the next three seasons, including the '16 campaign, which proved to be the catalyst of what was expected to be a long-term run for the Huskies under the 2026 College Football Hall of Fame inductee.

Coincidentally, history could be rhyming a remixed version of "Purple Rain" under Fisch, with his third season set to be the building block of a long-term run of his own in the Emerald City. From both an on-field and recruiting perspective, the former NFL assistant coach has transformed UW into a perennial potential College Football Playoff contender…if everything goes according to script this coming fall.

With a similarly friendly schedule in 2026 as the program had in its first run to a CFP berth in 2016, the cards could be in play for a third run over the next five months with third-year quarterback Demond Williams Jr. and a supporting cast capable of a ten-win season.

Defensively, second-year coordinator Ryan Walters has nearly a dozen starters back with reinforced depth across the unit to contend in the Big Ten Conference. Under third-year DC Pete Kwiatkowski in 2016, the Huskies finished No. 8 in the country in scoring defense (17.7) and No. 13 in yards allowed per game (299.9), both marks UW could hit in 2026 should injuries not prevent that from coming to fruition.

Even UW's special teams have been overhauled with a pair of transfer additions, punter Hunter Green and kicker Tyler Robles, along with the late re-addition of former kicker Grady Gross, to ensure that Fisch has left no stone unturned to put the program in the best position to make his first CFP appearance this coming season.

This article originally appeared on Huskies Wire: Ten Years Removed From UW Football's First CFP Appearance

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