After the Washington Huskies experienced some struggles along the offensive line in their first two games of the year, Saturday's win over Eastern Washington showed some steps in the right direction for Jedd Fisch's team.
As the Huskies racked up a season-high 148 rushing yards in the 48-16 win over their FCS opponents on Saturday, it happened behind several different combinations of offensive linemen. Left tackle Kodi Greene got a few series off, which saw John Mills kick out to left tackle and Geirean Hatchett take his spot at left guard, as Champ Taulealea worked into the rotation at right guard.
According to Fisch, that was done in an attempt to take some pressure off the former five-star recruit, who played all of Washington's offensive snaps
through the first two weeks.
"I think it's a lot for Kodi to take 210 snaps of left tackle as a true freshman, every single snap," Fisch said on Saturday night. "Almost every other one of our true freshmen, actually, all of them rotate. (Derek Colman-Brusa) rotates, (Ramzak Fruean) rotates, (Jeron Jones) rotates, John Mills rotated last year, the first four games of the season."
"So we felt like going into this year, or that what we were doing this season, we didn't feel is fair to Kodi, so we felt like it was a way; we felt good about our other guys. We felt that Champ also needs to be rotated in more, so it was a way to kind of move some guys around, and I think it worked well."
With center Landen Hatchett potentially returning to the rotation against Minnesota to open Big Ten play on Saturday, September 26, that may give the Huskies an opportunity to rotate Greene with Sam Houston State transfer Kolt Dieterich, who Washington originally brought in through the transfer portal to compete with the freshman at left tackle, but moved him inside to get him on the field as Hatchett spent the spring and fall recovering from a broken wrist.
This article originally appeared on Huskies Wire: Washington football experimenting with offensive line rotation
