Inside The Huskies

Apple Cup Came Down to Fateful Play and UW Chose Wrong

Jedd Fisch called off a pass to Giles Jackson, went with an option run.

Dan Raley

A disappointed Will Rogers walks off of Lumen Field.
A disappointed Will Rogers walks off of Lumen Field. / Skylar Lin Visuals

Jedd Fisch described it as his "got-to-have-it call." His University of Washington football team practiced the play all week. Need a yard and this was the answer.

Unfortunately for the Husky coach, his guys had more like a yard and a half to navigate. It might as well have been 100 yards.

With just 72 seconds left on the clock at Lumen Field, Husky quarterback Will Rogers received the snap in shotgun formation and went for an Apple Cup win.

Everything was on the line. It was a big-boy play. Washington State was on its heels.

"I felt good about it," the Mississippi State transfer said.

Rogers took the first of six steps to his right. He pitched the ball to running back Jonah Coleman behind him. Right tackle Drew Azzopardi and tight end Keleki Latu were out front blocking. WSU linebacker Kyle Thornton was out there, too.

Everything broke down all at once. Fisch said the play wasn't blocked properly. Thornton would concur. So would Coleman.

The UW running back never had a chance, never got to the line of scrimmage, never saw the end zone.

Thornton worked his way through the Huskies unblocked and shoved Coleman out of bounds for a 1-yard loss to preserve a hard-earned 24-19 victory.

Bedlam erupted for WSU even before it ran out the clock. Second-guessing began for the Huskies.

Before that fateful snap, the Huskies called timeout. They initially had a different play called, a pass to Giles Jackson.

Jackson was having a career day with 162 receiving yards, with a 45-yarder on one of his 8 catches moving the UW into scoring position on the final drive.

Yet once the Huskies got to the shadow of the goal line, Fisch didn't like WSU's defensive look. Jackson no longer was the target.

Fisch changed the play on the sideline to his "got-to-have-it call," to that fateful option pitch that didn't work.

"Giles had a great game," Fisch said. "We tried to get Giles the ball for the final touchdown on the fourth-and-1 play initially. We probably should have done that."

He will forever regret it. He guessed wrong. He lost to the Cougars because of it.

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Dan Raley

DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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