Day one of study hall, as coach Jedd Fisch called Thursday's fall practice, is in the books for the Washington Huskies.
With no pads on and no team period drills, the majority of practice was spent working on individual drills with position coaches and special teams, as Fisch wanted to allow his team to get its feet under it and get back to the basics with a month to go before the Huskies open the season Sunday, September 6, with the annual Apple Cup matchup against the Washington State Cougars.
"It's all about getting better, it's all about improving our fundamentals," the head coach said after practice.
"I view this as study hall...it helps the kids gain confidence, especially young, first day at training camp practice, and you're a freshman,
anxiety, and nerves, and you're like, 'Oh, what is it gonna look like?' It's a lot easier to kind of work your way into it. So by the time you're actually hitting somebody, you've gone through this enough time that you feel confident."
While that group is headlined by a pair of four-star freshmen who enrolled in June, cornerback Rahsjon Duncan and defensive lineman JD Hill, it also extended to a group of transfers going through their first practices as Huskies after missing all of spring while recovering from injuries: running backs Jayden Limar and Trey Cooley, and defensive tackle Kai McClendon.
Combined with outside linebacker Russell Davis II and linebacker Buddah Al-Uqdah, who were dressed and participating in some capacity after knee injuries limited them in 2025, Washington's depth was on display on Thursday.
Here are some other notes from Thursday's abbreviated workout.
Fall Camp Notebook
- Special teams coordinator Chris Petrilli loved this rep from Hill.
Chris Petrilli was very pleased with this rep from JD Hill (54) pic.twitter.com/XuNvXIOrHW
— Roman Tomashoff (@rtomashoff34) August 6, 2026
- Fisch was also extremely complimentary of Duncan: "He's a super talented kid that was an elite athlete coming out of Marcus Peters's high school, coached by Marcus and Marcus's dad. He's a really, really bright academic kid that also certainly is very athletic and capable of playing both corner and safety...We've got to see what it looks like and how quickly he picks it up."
- Sophomore Victor Sanchez Hernandez appears to have changed positions, moving from outside linebacker to defensive tackle.
- Stanford transfer Elijah Brown is the early favorite as Washington's backup quarterback thanks to his Power Four experience with the Cardinal, according to Fisch.
- Friday is expected to be another shorter, "study hall" sort of practice before the Huskies put pads on for the first time on Sunday morning.
This article originally appeared on Huskies Wire: Washington football passes study hall on first day of fall camp
