The future of Fisch

As college coaching vacancies have been filled over the past week, I’ve found two things specifically notable:

1. Jedd Fisch was not among those coaches moving schools;

2. Jedd Fisch was not among those coaches who received contract extensions instead of moving schools like Nebraska’s Matt Rhule, Missouri’s Eli Drinkwitz, BYU’s Kalani Sitake and others.

I’m very happy about that first fact. I wanted Fisch back at Washington. More specifically, I wanted Fisch back at Washington with quarterback Demond Williams, running back Adam Mohammed and the incredibly promising crop of true freshmen who were on the field this year.

As for the second fact, I’m not really sweating it. I say that even though it greatly increases the chances that 2026 is Fisch’s last season as Huskies coach. This is especially true if Washington winds up having the kind of season I hope it does.

I’ll get back to Fisch in just a second, but first a bit of catch-up work.

John Schneider is not perfect when it comes to picking quarterbacks. One of his first moves as general manager of the Seahawks was trading draft capital for the right to sign Charlie Whitehurst to a two-year contract.

However, when he decides it’s time to move on from a quarterback, buyer beware. That was my underlying message in last week’s column that was published in The News Tribune.

I do not own an NFL franchise. I will not ever be in position to own one. If I did, however, I would have a hard and fast rule: Thou shalt not acquire a quarterback from John Schneider in a trade.

• John Schneider knows when to walk away

  By Danny O’Neil

This is unquestionably the funniest way to desribe a team that ranks third in a four-team division:

She wears Prada, but pays nada said one New York TV reporter.

She’s attention-starved, but cash-hungry according to the New York Post in its story about a fashionably dressed young lady who ran up restaurant tabs she did not pay and later posted photos of her mouth-watering meals to Instagram.

Also, while jailed for failing to pay for for her dining bills, she was evicted from what was described as a luxury apartment where she owed a reported $40,000 in back rent.

The biggest question I have, however, involves a picture of a man the paper identified as Robert Ranzulli, a “city marshal” who came to oversee the eviction dressed in what appeared to be a leather duster. New York is not a real place. It is a simulation.

OK, now let’s get back to the main event of today’s newsletter: Jedd Fisch.

The stiffest challenge that a college football program like Washington faces is the possibility that once it finds a good coach, that coach may not stay long.

The Huskies were fortunate in that Chris Petersen wasn’t all that interested in taking another job. Kalen Deboer, however, was clearly more ambitious when it came to moving up the pecking order. The fact that he didn’t sign a contract extension during his second season with Washington wasn’t indicative of a lack of effort on the school’s part. He wanted his options open.

The same might be true for Fisch if the Huskies really start rolling next season. In fact, it’s possible that Fisch doesn’t want to put his name on a deal that would make it more difficult (i.e. more expensive) for him to leave.

Now, Fisch has not enjoyed the same level of success as Deboer over his first two years. He did not inherit as talented of a roster as Deboer did, either.

The reality of college football in its current iteration is that a school can’t wait for a coach to prove himself. Not unless it is the bluest of blue bloods, and even then, you can lose your coach if you’re not willing to keep piling up the cash to keep your coach in place. And piling up the cash means not just salary, but the resources available for facilities and players.

Still, I’m willing to take that chance with Fisch, and the reason for that is not because the Huskies have failed to show progress in his two seasons. Washington has narrowed the gap between itself and the top of the Big Ten.

However, there remains a clear gap, and it’s the reason for that gap that gives me pause about deepening the commitment to Fisch right now.

It was Washington’s offense, not its defense, that undermined its chances at a signature win this season. Washington scored more than 35 more points in seven of its eight victories. It was held to fewer than 15 in each of its four losses.

This is not at all what I expected. I thought that the Huskies very well could lose some shootouts because it was unable to stop teams, but I didn’t expect to see the offense sputter as consistently as it did against top-ranked competition.

Now, I’m not going to tell you that Washington’s defense was championship caliber. I wonder if it would have been able to truly stop Ohio State if that game had been close, but the fact Washington forced Oregon to kick four field goals shows that this defense had some starch in it.

The offense was great against bad teams and a no-show against really good opponents.

I want to see this team take a next step before signing Fisch to an extension. I say that knowing full well that waiting makes it decidedly more likely that he’ll wind up leaving. Fisch’s current buyout is $10 million. This is the amount that Washington would receive if he left to coach another school. Without an extension, that number drops to $6 million on Jan. 9, 2026. If the Huskies are headed to the 12-team playoff this time next year, which I do think is a possibility, then Fisch could be hotly pursued.

If that happens, it won’t be just a question of what Washington can pay him, but how much the school has in the way of resources both in terms of player compensation and facilities. Fisch has not been quiet about how much catching up he thinks Washington has to do in terms of its facilities.

But even if Washington signed him to an extension this year, I don’t think that eliminates the possibility he could leave for another job a year from now.