Jedd Fisch breaks down Washington’s restart at Big Ten Media Days

Washington made its Big Ten Conference debut Thursday afternoon at Lucas Oil Stadium during Big Ten Media Days. Jedd Fisch took the main stage around 12:20 p.m. Eastern Time and began addressing the media about his program. Fisch began by expressing his gratitude for being the head coach at Washington during its transition year to the Big Ten Conference. He then introduced the three players he was bringing with him to Indianapolis. Jonah Coleman, Kamren Fabiculanan and Carson Bruener represented the Huskies at Media Days. Fisch described Washington as one of the elite programs, both athletically and academically, in the country. This season will be a reboot in Washington, and the cultural installation has been swift but effective.

‘Restart’ in Washington

“Washington football has beaten Oregon the last three times we’ve played. We’ve beaten Texas the last two times we’ve played. We’ve beaten USC the last two times we’ve played.” Fisch noted the program’s success over the last two seasons during his opening remarks to the media. Washington has won 25 of 28 games and has been among college football’s elite teams since 2022.

But this season, the team is almost entirely new. It replaces 21 of the 22 starters from last year’s National Championship squad. It has an entirely new coaching staff, training staff, strength staff and nutrition staff. “That’s never been done before, and we’re excited about the challenge,” Fisch said. Washington’s head coach isn’t calling it a rebuild. Instead, he’s calling it a reboot.

The Big Ten now stretches coast to coast, giving Washington a huge opportunity to expand its brand nationally. Fisch said he plans to do just that. “We’re going to take our great city and our great university all over this country to find great players.” He wants to build one of the best recruiting staffs in the country.

“Recruiting is the lifeblood of our program, we’re going to build our team around high school athletes,” Fisch called it a developmental program where his goal is to find the best players in the country to build his roster year in and year out. It already appears to be happening, as Washington’s 2025 recruiting class is currently ranked in the top 20 in the country and fifth in the Big Ten.

Jedd Fisch on Installing a Culture

Relative to the college football calendar, Fisch took over at Washington late in the offseason. He accepted the job on Jan. 14, 12 days after the winter transfer window closed. The coaching change sent several players into the transfer portal, and the new staff had to wait until the April window opened to reshuffle the roster. In the end, just 36 scholarship students remained from last year’s program. And only four of them had made career starts. There are 46 new scholarship students on that roster for the 2024 season.

Fisch said one of the challenges of installing a culture in Washington is that these players haven’t played meaningful snaps together. And many of them haven’t played a single snap at the college level. “We’ve had to teach them what we expect on a daily basis,” Fisch said onstage at Big Ten Media Day. “They’ve embraced it, they’ve worked extremely hard together.”

“Our culture is a culture of belonging, it’s a culture of inclusivity.” There are players from different backgrounds and different schools on this roster. Creating that inclusive environment has been the catalyst for quickly establishing a culture at Montlake. The common denominator is a group that enjoys competing, and a coaching staff that understands their role in bringing players together and fostering internal competition. What Fisch described in Indianapolis describes exactly what we’ve seen with this team this offseason.