Everything Jedd Fisch Said During Opening Presser

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Jedd Fisch: Thank you very much. It’s great to be here today for what’s my sixth Media Day as a head coach, third Media Day at the University of Washington, and certainly extremely grateful that I get to live my dream of being a head football coach in college football.

I want to thank Commissioner Petitti for putting on a fantastic Media Day and leading the Big Ten in a very special way. I think we are so fortunate that we have a commissioner like Tony Petitti, and I think it puts us in a great position to sit here with multiple National Championships because of his leadership.

I want to thank President Jones and athletic director Pat Chun for having me as the head football coach at the University of Washington.

Before I go any further, I want to thank the most important people in my life: my wife, Amber; my three girls, Zaylee, Ashlee and Kendall. Life is not easy for a coach’s family, and I couldn’t do the job without them.

I stand here today representing the University of Washington: our players, our students, our faculty, our alumni, our supporters and everyone that wears the W.

Everything I’m about to tell you today, though, is about our players, what our players have built, what our players have accomplished. They’re the ones who run out of that tunnel. They’re the ones who pour the blood, the sweat, the tears out there every single day.

But somewhere along the way, we’ve lost track of the players and spent so much time talking about NIL and the transfer portal. We spend so much time talking about the ever-changing environment, Congressional bills. We’ve lost track of the very special kids that represent college athletics and college sports.

We brought three very special players here today: Jacob Manu, Demond Williams, and Landen Hatchett.

Jacob Manu has been with us for four years. I’ve known him for six. I was the first Division I offer he ever had at Arizona, and he truly is one of the most important people to me in my entire coaching career. Watching him become who he is today, he was an All-Pac-12 player, he’s now Preseason All-Big Ten player. He is an incredible linebacker and even better kid. I’ve known him for six years. I love having him a part of our family.

Demond Williams, I recruited Demond, I’ve coached Demond. He’s committed to me and our staff at two different places. He’s played for me now going into his third year. We have an elite quarterback in Demond Williams, someone that’s thrown the ball for over 3,000 yards, ran the ball for over 600 yards, multiple touchdowns, 25 in the air, six on the ground.

I can just say, as good of a player as Demond is, his leadership is even better, the way he has commanded our locker room. Demond is no longer a teenager. He turned 20 in March. He is now leading this group in a very special way.

The team has rallied behind his leadership, and I can’t wait to see the type of year that he’s going to have for us in his second year as a starting quarterback.

Landen Hatchett is the third player that we brought, Ferndale kid from Washington, one of seven players that were on the 2023 National Championship-contending team that is still with us. Landen is our starting center, leads our offensive line, tough as nails, playing through a broken wrist last season. And we’re very fortunate to have Landen and his brother Geirean on our team and Landen here today.

Six years, five years, three years together, to me that’s the definition of committing to the committed. We haven’t changed our philosophy; we recruit to our family. We recruit high school players. We have very few players from the transfer portal, and hopefully we will get to the number zero from the portal as we move forward.

Our coaching staff tells you everything about where we are. We moved 21 families from Tucson two years ago, 20 families are with us still. We have all of our coaches back this year that we wanted back this year. There’s not one coach that chose to leave our program this season.

We made one addition in Matt Cavanaugh. We made one promotion in JP Losman, and for the rest of that group, we are here and ready to go.

Last season we took a big step forward. We were 104th in scoring offense in our first year. We were 17th last year. We were 53rd in scoring defense our first year. We were 15th this past year.

But we didn’t come here to talk about last year, we came here to talk about what’s in front of us. I love our program, and I love where we’re headed. I love our culture. I love our players. I love the physical, violent, disciplined football that we play. We represent the Big Ten in the right way. It’s a championship conference. This is the closest thing you get to the National Football League.

We play through three time zones. We play on Fridays and Saturdays and Sundays, us starting the season off on a Sunday just represents one more indication of being just like the National Football League.

We have championship coaches. We play for championships. We have NFL coordinators, NFL coaches, Super Bowl winners. We certainly have a coaching staff across the conference that are elite and the best at what they do.

We have 18 teams that are all tremendous, well-coached and well-funded universities.

We retain our players here at the University of Washington. We have 101 players on our roster, probably the smallest roster in the Big Ten. 58 of them are returners. We return a starter at 20 of our 22 positions.

We have, including our transfers, 400 career college starts in our team; yet we have one of the youngest teams in the entire college football and certainly in the Big Ten.

We will retain the players we develop. We do not bring in mercenaries. We are about a program that recruits high school players and signed 28, 27 and 26 the last three years.

I’ve certainly seen the speculation about what is spent on our roster, and I can tell you that’s not even close. This team was not bought; this team was built. This team was built from 18-, 19- and 20-year-olds. We were the only team in the Big Ten that started an offensive lineman for 10 games who was a true freshman who became a freshman All-American.

We were the only team in the Big Ten, I think, that will start a freshman at left tackle this year, a sophomore at left guard, a sophomore at right guard, a junior or senior at right tackle that has another — center, and a fifth-year player at right tackle.

Players come here and stay here not for the money but for the program, the opportunity to become a pro in life and pro in the NFL.

I’m extremely excited about where we are as a program. I’m extremely excited to coach at Washington. We have a world-class institution with world-class football, with a world-class faculty and resources and the biggest stage in the greatest setting. We are looking to improve every single day. We are looking to get closer. We are looking to build upon our success.

But to me, it’s all about respect, accountability, integrity, selflessness and enthusiasm. Those five words spell raise, and we are certainly looking to raise the bar this year.

With that, I look forward to taking some questions, and go Dogs.

Q.  Coach, you talked about the changing landscape of everything, and with the realignment in the Big Ten conference, now all of the teams are spread across the entire breadth of the country. Does that kind of travel and those travel expenses kind of wreak havoc on your recovery between games? Does it play a big factor in how you prepare?

FISCH: I think that traveling is certainly a factor in everything that we do, and we have to make sure that we’re handling it the right way. We’re very fortunate; I think the two winningest coaches on the road in the National Football League is Sean McVay and Mike McDonald, Mike being right around the corner, and then Sean being a close friend. I used to work for Sean.

We’ve used a lot of studies on what they’ve done. But I think it’s what the Big Ten is about, man. It’s about the National Football League mentality, that you have to be ready to go from LA — the Rams play the Giants and we play Rutgers. Seahawks go ahead and play the Ravens, and we play Maryland.

I think that’s the coolest part of what we’ve got going, is that we can get our kids and our players ready to play at the next level because unlike the other conferences or some of the conferences that are regional, we are a national brand.

Q.  You’ve had life in the Pac-12 previously, obviously you’ve stated things about the Big Ten, about the travel, about the grind. On a week-to-week basis, what is that grind like compared to some of the other experiences you’ve had as a coach previously?

FISCH: I think the biggest thing in the Big Ten is how the teams are built. The teams are built in a certain way that it’s about — there’s a physicality in the Big Ten. There’s a toughness. There’s an edge. There’s a wear and tear on the player’s body in the Big Ten.

You’re playing programs that are accustomed to maybe not scoring as much but play an incredible defense, and then you get on a plane and you fly three and a half hours and you’ve got to be ready to do it again at your place or maybe get back on the road again the following week.

It’s certainly different. It is not — like Pac-12 was regional. No flights were really longer than two and a half hours. The type of player was very similar. You recruited for the most part West Coast.

Now you’re talking about playing the guys from Jersey and Chicago and Ohio and Pennsylvania and Iowa and Indiana, bred a certain way. Then you also are looking at playing guys from the West Coast with SC and Oregon, UCLA and everything in between.

Certainly there’s some wear and tear, but that’s what we signed up for, and that’s what we’re excited to compete in.

Q.  I’d like to ask you about Dezmen Roebuck and the year that he’s poised to have, both as a player and a person.

FISCH: Yeah, Dez is an awesome human being. He is an awesome kid that does everything right. I can’t think of one thing that that kid doesn’t do right at the highest level.

He came in in June. He was not an early enrollee because he wanted to finish all four years of high school. He wanted to be with his family. He wanted to complete his track in high school. He showed up in June and started in September and then became an All-American.

He is not — when you look at him physically, you wouldn’t say he’s the tallest, he’s the fastest, he’s the biggest, but he’s just the best. That kid is something that we’re going to move him more in the slot this year. I think it’s a natural position for him, and I cannot wait to see what he does from year one to year two.

He’s just a player that our family loves. He’s right around the corner from us back where we were in Tucson, and really proud of what he’s done for us at Washington.

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