As the old adage goes, a win is a win.
But in watching Washington's 21-14 victory over Michigan State to get bowl eligible, it certainly seemed like a letdown that the Huskies won by only one score. Yes, Jedd Fisch's squad landed in East Lansing around 3:00 am Saturday morning after a nationwide ground stoppage delayed their flight out of Seattle, and yes, Michigan State was coming off an emotional rivalry win against Michigan that had their team buzzing.
Even so, it was clear on Saturday that the Huskies were the more talented team on the field, as they should be. Fisch and company are in year three on Montlake, while Pat Fitzgerald took control of the Spartans less than a year ago. Lest we forget that Michigan State had not won a conference
game until defeating Michigan, a team spiraling in their own right, by kicking five field goals and holding a Wolverines offense that has already fired their coordinator to 6 points.
And so, naturally, Michigan State drove down the field in 7 plays to score an opening touchdown in just 3 minutes and 22 seconds, aided slightly by an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on first-year edge rusher Ramzak Fruean. Washington's defense came out quietly for the third time in five games, allowing plays of 30 and 26 yards on that opening drive. In the second quarter, a roughing the passer penalty on fourth-year edge rusher Jacob Lane revived a Michigan State drive that was on track to end in a three-and-out.
Starting quarterback Alessio Milivojevic was injured on a scramble five plays later, but the entrance of journeyman backup Cam Fancher did little to slow Michigan State's offense down. After Fancher took a short sack on third-and-10 from the Huskies' 25-yard line, Washington instead accepted a holding penalty to try to push Michigan State out of field goal range, but Fancher responded with a 29-yard completion to Fredrick Moore.
Four plays later, on fourth-and-goal, Fancher threw his first touchdown pass since the 2024 season, when the backup quarterback was at Florida Atlantic.
In the second half, Fancher injured his knee twisting in the grasp of Fruean as he tried to throw the ball away. It instead ended up in the arm of Jacob Manu, but Washington's ensuing drive stalled out and brought in third-string quarterback Kayd Coffman. After Dylan Robinson saved some embarrassment by ripping a deep throw out of Moore's hands to force a punt, Dezmen Roebuck muffed the return and handed the ball back to Michigan State, who also had enough time to clear Fancher to return to the game.
Washington escaped the error when last week's Big Ten Special Teams Player of the Week Liam Boyd pushed a 50-yard field goal wide right.
Offensively, the execution errors were just as maddening. Tyler Robles hooked a 48-yarder wide left on the opening drive. Two deep throws, one to Chris Lawson and one to Roebuck, on the second drive landed just too far in front of their intended receivers before Demond Williams Jr. was finally able to connect with Lawson on the third try to score a 58-yard touchdown.
On three consecutive drives spanning the end of the second quarter and the opening of the third frame, Washington suffered drops from each of their top three receivers. First came Lawson, who had a ball bounce off his facemask as he turned to run before securing the catch. Roebuck dropped a tunnel screen on third-and-8 on the opening drive of the second half that looked set up to convert the down. On another deep throw to the middle of the field, Rashid Williams could not snag a ball that came in just barely behind him, snuffing an explosive play on a drive that instead ended in a three-and-out.
It's not a new issue for this Washington team to look this way - think back to the Huskies' failure to sufficiently crush Washington State, Utah State, or even Eastern Washington the way they were expected to. All season, Fisch's team has shown flashes of having elite-level talent: Williams' scrambling 2-point conversion last week against Penn State, Rashid Williams' toe-tap catch on the sideline in the second quarter that led to a Lawson touchdown, and any number of plays on Lawson's ever-expanding highlight reel.
It's the same story defensively: safety Alex McLaughlin looks on track to be named first team all-Big Ten, linebacker Xe'ree Alexander executed a Peanut Punch to seal the game, and a bevy of young players across the unit have looked fully like they belong at this level.
Fisch will say that the ability of Washington to win games like Saturday's, or Nebraska's, is a testament to the Huskies' acclimation to the Big Ten, where defense and low-scoring affairs reign supreme. But when the defense shuts out opponents in the second half twice in a row, and the offense feels oh-so-close to hitting explosive play after explosive play every week, it's hard not to envision what Washington might look like with just a little more consistency all around.
The Huskies have yet to play a clean, complete game where criticisms of the performance are mere nitpicks. Muffing a punt would be a nitpick if Washington had won by 20 on Saturday. So would a first-quarter unsportsmanlike penalty, or a couple of near misses on big plays offensively. And it felt like the Huskies should have won this game by 20. But the accumulation of those mistakes kept Michigan State in it, kept Nebraska in it, kept Purdue in it, kept Utah State in it, and prevented them from ever being in it against Iowa, Minnesota, and Penn State.
It's why Washington is celebrating scraping their way to bowl eligibility when bowls have never meant less than seeing their last two games, both against ranked opponents, as auditions for the College Football Playoff committee.
This article originally appeared on Huskies Wire: Washington football plagued by execution errors despite Saturday win
