Demond Williams Jr. Unlikely to Play Against Purdue

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SEATTLE — The Washington Huskies football team is set for its second road game of the season against the Purdue Boilermakers at 5 p.m. PT on Friday at Ross-Ade Stadium in West Lafayette, Ind, and it looks like the Huskies will be entering the game with their backup quarterback.

In a weekly news conference Monday, UW head coach Jedd Fisch said that third-year quarterback Demond Williams Jr. is day-to-day with a "significant" rib injury that he suffered in the team's 41-24 loss to the Iowa Hawkeyes on Oct. 9.

In the news conference, Fisch said that he doesn't expect Williams to play Friday, but the team is still awaiting imaging to determine the severity of the injury. The Chandler, Ariz., native didn't practice Monday.

"I think, right now, we're just going to proceed with Elijah taking the reps today," Fisch said. "Demond can't take any reps today — kind of go from there. There would have to be a pretty significant change for anything to change there."

The injury in the team's previous game against Iowa sparked discussions of a potential quarterback change for the Huskies.

Before Williams' exit, he was 6-for-11 for 69 yards and ran 11 times for -8 yards in all but one drive of the first half. He was pulled from the game in the second-to-last drive of the first half, which resulted in a field goal. He was sacked four times.

Brown entered and finished the game 28-for-39 for 252 yards and three passing touchdowns. He was sacked twice.

"(Elijah's) a fast processor in terms of getting the ball out of his hands," Fisch said. "He has a good control and demeanor. He is able to run our offense, take out some zone read plays. But other than that, under center, play-action — he was recruited by Stanford, which, in a lot of ways, run a similar offense to what we've done and played for Andrew Luck and an NFL head coach last year. … I believe (Brown's) been trained very similarly (to our quarterbacks) in a lot of ways."

Brown's efficiency and the team's offense struggles with Williams as the signal-caller has led to some clamor among the fan base to make a quarterback switch.

UW is still yet to score more than 24 points against a Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) opponent this season.

In six (or five-and-a-half by technicality), Williams has completed 66.7% of his passes for 1,396 yards, eight touchdowns and three interceptions. He's ran 64 times for 183 yards and two touchdowns.

Brown, in two appearances (the other in garbage time against the Eastern Washington Eagles), has completed 71.4% of his pass attempts for 276 yards, four touchdowns and no turnovers.

Fisch was noncommittal about a potential quarterback switch, instead opting to put the focus on getting Williams healthy and getting through this week's game against the Boilermakers.

"I don't know," Fisch said. "I'm gonna have (Williams) just focus on (getting healthy). The last thing I want is to put added pressure on Elijah or added pressure on Demond. Right now, that's not gonna benefit anybody. Elijah just needs to go out there and play the best Elijah football he can play. Demond needs to go out there and do everything he can this week to try and get back out there this Friday night, or whenever the next game is that he can play."

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