Washington’s Jedd Fisch Considered Among CFB's Most Underrated Coaches
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Through Jedd Fisch’s first 26 games as the head football coach at Washington, the program has steadily risen, but not quite to where it was when he inherited it fresh off a national championship appearance.
At 15-11 overall, 9-9 in the Big Ten, Fisch is entering his third season at the helm of the Huskies on the verge—if everything goes correctly—of a return to the College Football Playoff in 2026.
Despite signing a top 15 recruiting class, returning dynamic quarterback Demond Williams Jr., and effectively retaining the entire coaching staff and the majority of the roster from 2025 that was eligible to return, Fisch still isn’t viewed among the upper echelon of coaches in the sport.
Fisch, however, is one of seven who made CBS Sports’ list of underrated coaches for the upcoming 2026 season.
Fisch came in as the fourth-most underrated coach going into this fall, behind Southern Methodist’s Rhett Lashlee, Louisville’s Jeff Brohm, and BYU’s Kalani Sitake.
Of the three coaches behind Fisch on the list—Houston’s Willie Fritz, Georgia Tech’s Brent Key, and Tennessee’s Josh Heupel—only Fritz has a bowl victory in the past two seasons, while Key and Heupel have combined to boast an 0-4 postseason record over the same stretch.
The fact that Fisch is viewed somewhat as an underrated coach isn’t a negative. He’s fresh off a nine-win season in 2025, which should have been a double-digit victory campaign if not for an early 13-10 loss at Wisconsin on Nov. 8, a defeat that left a stain on Fisch's second season in Seattle.
Had UW finished 10-3 instead of 9-4 overall—even with the brief quarrel with Williams and whether or not he entered the transfer portal, which ultimately he never did—there would be more vocal support in Fisch's favor.
That makes the onus all the more present for Fisch to at minimum reach the 10-win mark in 2026, as he did his third season at Arizona before he made the move north to Seattle, and with fortune on the Huskies' side, maybe he could carve a path to the College Football Playoff.
This article originally appeared on Huskies Wire: CBS Sports Names Jedd Fisch as One of Five Most Underrated Coaches
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