There are innumerable stats out there to tell you that Washington’s offense has gotten off to an incredible start. Since halftime of the Colorado State game in Week 1, the only thing that could stop the Huskies has been the clock. A pair of kneel downs at the end of the game were the only things standing between Washington’s offense and scoring on 17 consecutive drives.
It seems very unlikely that that kind of scoring prowess is sustainable through the rest of the season. Especially since the competition
is about to get much tougher in the form of #1 Ohio State coming to town on Saturday. But I still wanted to capture this moment in time and get a sense for how rare it is for Washington to do what they’ve done through three games.
To provide a point of comparison, I went through the best offensive three-game stretch of every season in the last 31 years of Husky football. That’s as far back as sports-reference goes in their game log showing full offensive information so that’s where I’m going to draw the line for this sample.
I looked at 5 different offensive indicators: points, total yards, yards per play, first downs, and turnovers. If there were two stretches with similar point totals but uneven yardage then I chose the set with more yards. I ranked each season from 1 to 31 and then added up the totals so that the lowest combined score gets 1st place. Here are the top 5 seasons.
5. 2013 Huskies (9-4 record, 25th AP Poll)
159 points (2nd), 1,752 yards (3rd), 7.36 yards per play (6th), 76 first downs (7th), 4 turnovers (11th)
Washington started off the year hot from a yardage standpoint with 34+ points in each of their first 3 games, all wins, including a 56-0 dismantling of Idaho State with 680 yards. But the offense really hit its stride later in the year after a three-game losing streak dropped them down to .500. A stretch in Pac-12 play saw them put up 31+ points in four consecutive games including 59 versus Colorado and 69 at Oregon State.
A 41-31 loss at UCLA in the middle broke up the chance to have three straight 600+ yard games which lowers the totals here. But the two big wins included the Huskies both running and throwing for 300+ yards in a 59-7 win over Colorado (10.8 YPA for Keith Price) and then the Huskies rushing for 530(!) yards versus Oregon State. I think you’d say that 140 rush yards on 7.8 YPC plus 2 TDs is an elite day at the offense for a RB. Well the Huskies had 3 different backs hit at least that total while putting up 69 points on Oregon State. Bishop Sankey had 179 yards and 3 TDs, Deontae Cooper had 166 yards and 2 TDs, and Dwayne Washington had 141 yards and 2 TDs. All of this in a game Keith Price missed and Cyler Miles started at QB.
4. 2022 Huskies (11-2 record, 8th AP Poll)
142 points (6th), 1,800 yards (2nd), 8.78 yards per play (2nd), 82 first downs (3rd), 4 turnovers (11th)
Washington’s offense with Kalen DeBoer, Ryan Grubb, and Michael Penix Jr. was very good from the start. But they were really humming towards the end of the season during their 7-game win streak following consecutive road losses to UCLA and Arizona State. During the final 3 games of the regular season they pulled the upset win at Oregon followed by putting 50+ points on both Colorado and Washington State.
The win over Oregon of course featured the all-time TD throw to Taj Davis as part of Penix’s 408 passing yards. Penix threw for a regular-season low 295 yards versus Colorado but that’s because the run game put up 280 yards against the hapless pre-Deion Buffaloes led by Wayne Taulapapa’s 107 yds and 2 TDs. But the Huskies saved the best for last putting up 703 yards against the Cougars in the Apple Cup including an absurd 10.5 yards per play. Only a pair of turnovers kept UW from putting up 60 in Pullman that day.
3. 2023 Huskies (14-1 record, 2nd AP Poll)
140 points (8th), 1,844 yards (1st), 9.46 yards per play (1st), 82 first downs (2nd), 3 turnovers (7th)
Washington followed up that torrid finish to the regular season in 2022 with an even better start to 2023 that had folks wondering if the Huskies were the successors to that Joe Burrow LSU squad*. It turns out that Washington fell a little short of that marker in the end but from an efficiency standpoint between the 20’s there was no better Husky stretch of the past 30 yards. The main thing keeping this edition from finishing #1 were some misses in the red zone to lower the overall points total a bit and 3 turnovers.
*2019 LSU put up a three-game stretch with 142 points averaging 8.0 yards per play…in the SEC title game, plus the 2 CFP games. Wow.
Washington averaged 9+ yards per play in all 3 of the games in wins over Boise State, Tulsa, and at Michigan State while Penix threw for 450+ in each. The Huskies technically scored more points if you go with weeks 2, 3, and 4 and substitute a 59-32 win over Cal for that 56-19 win over Boise but the Cal game featured multiple D/ST touchdowns so the yardage number wasn’t quite as impressive.
2. 2016 Huskies (12-2 record, 4th AP Poll)
155 points (3rd), 1,625 yards (3rd), 7.93 yards per play (3rd), 78 first downs (5th), 1 turnover (1st)
This might be the sweetest stretch of all of these given the competition. It started out with a 44-6 win in a top-ten matchup with Stanford that marked Washington’s arrival as a true national contender that season. Then came the all-time 70-21 beatdown of Oregon in Eugene featuring “The Point”. And UW capped it all off with a 41-17 win over Oregon State. The numbers could’ve been even gaudier but the 66-27 win over Cal featuring John Ross’s memorable weaving long TD catch came too late to be included with the Oregon one.
The 2016 edition of the Huskies was a lot more balanced than the Penix teams in the 2 spots above as Browning threw for no more than 304 yards in any of the three games (although Browning had 7 total TDs against Oregon). The running game went for 200+ against all three opponents with Gaskin running for 100+ yards in each game including 197 against Oregon.
1. 2025 Huskies (3-0 Record?)
167 points (1st), 1,609 yards (6th), 7.93 yards per play (4th), 83 first downs (2nd), 1 turnover (1st)
Sure enough we have this current Husky team at #1. There are certainly some quibbles with the methodology here. I didn’t try to do any adjustment for strength of schedule. Every team Washington has faced ranks 115th or worse right now in SP+ so this has to be one of the weaker stretch of opponents featured. This group leads the way in points scored but that does include a punt return touchdown and a pick-six so the offense only scored 153 rather than 167.
All that being said, this is still undoubtedly one of the great extended offensive performances of the last 30 years of Husky football. The total yardage was 6th overall mostly because of quite a few short fields since we know the Huskies scored a touchdown just about every time they touched the ball. That kind of red zone mastery combined with just one turnover (on a miscommunication early snap of all things) meant this is one of the cleanest offensive stretches we’ve ever seen even if it wasn’t quite as explosive as the Penix/DeBoer seasons from a few years ago.
We obviously don’t know how things are going to go the rest of the year for the 2025 Washington squad. But it’s worth noting that the other 4 teams on this list all finished the season ranked in the AP Poll and the three immediately behind this year’s team won 11+ games and finished in the top 8. We’ll find out a lot more about the Huskies this weekend playing Ohio State but recent history suggests that any team capable of putting up offensive fireworks like this demands to be taken seriously as a potential CFP contender.
**********
Bonus Content! Worst Husky Offense
31. 2004 Huskies (1-10 record)
50 points (31st), 1,114 yards (29th), 4.62 yards per play (31st), 56 first downs (28th), 10 turnovers (31st)
I’m sure most people were expecting the 2008 season to show up as the worst best (just go with it) three-game stretch of the last 31 years. They actually finished 6th worst in this formula thanks to a low turnover count and a lot of 1st downs that just didn’t result in points. The bottom 6 was made up in some order of 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, and…2021. Thanks John Donovan.
There’s absolute no topping that 2004 squad for sheer offensive incompetence though. It’s mind-boggling to process. Washington’s only win that season was a 21-6 victory over San Jose State but they scored just 16 total points in the 2 games before it and 14 total points in the 2 games after it.
The season-best offensive output came in week 2 during a 37-31 loss to UCLA in which the offense put up just 419 yards. The games on either side of it were a 35-16 loss to Fresno State and 38-3 loss at Notre Dame. That means somehow the best Washington could muster was 50 points in a three-game stretch which they did in both the 1st three and last three games of the season. The end of the year featured losses of 23-13 to Arizona, 42-12 to California, and 28-25 at Wazzu and the yardage totals were worse than the opening stretch is why I went to that one. 50 points. In three games. Was the best they could do.
In that UCLA game which featured the high-water mark for the 2004 season, the offense didn’t turn the ball over. That’s the only time it happened that season. In the two other games of that stretch though they turned it over 5 times each; 4 picks and a lost fumble in game one and a pick and 4 lost fumbles in game three. The Huskies had 7 games with 4+ turnovers and two with 7 in a game. Never again.
