Heavy on Starters, Huskies Appear in First 2021 Top 25 football ranking

Jimmy Lake's team, with the most starters back of anyone, gets slotted in early ESPN poll.

The confetti was still swirling through the stadium in Miami, with Alabama barely the national champion for just a few seconds, when the first 2021 top 25 football poll dropped on ESPN.com.

Clemson was a curious choice for No. 1 — considering Trevor Lawrence is taking his long locks and rocket arm to the NFL — but it was refreshing to see six-time title-holder 'Bama not summarily rubber-stamped to do it again.

Where are the Huskies, you ask?

ESPN has Jimmy Lake's team at No. 14, which seems like a reasonable slot to begin, especially since these guys played just four games over the past two months.

Yet there are three things to mull when sizing up the next version of Huskies and anticipating their return to a longer stay in the national rankings.

Lake's team will return 19 starters — 20, if you go by the lineup used in the last outing against Stanford, swapping a finally healthy Tuli Letuligasenoa for Josiah Bronson at defensive tackle, which the coaching staff did.

Either way, the UW will field the most returning regulars of any team among this elite grouping. 

Nineteen starters ties the Huskies with Indiana for the most anywhere. 

Twenty returning first-teamers puts them all alone in the experience universe.

Secondly, the UW returns all 11 offensive starters. No other team in ESPN's top 25 returns a unit, offense or defense, completely intact. 

Thirdly, the Huskies will welcome back their starting quarterback, Dylan Morris — something they haven't done in three seasons since Jake Browning strapped it back on for his senior season in 2018 — and let him fend off 5-star recruit Sam Huard and Colorado State grad transfer Patrick O'Brien, formerly of Nebraska. 

Four of the top six teams in this early college football ranking, Clemson, Alabama, Ohio State and Texas A&M, all need to break in new guys behind the center, and seven teams overall are QB hunting.

While the top six teams selected by ESPN all seem to float in and out of the highest slots as a matter of routine, this media outlet did pick previously unheralded North Carolina (7), Iowa State (8) and Indiana (10) as programs on the rapid rise, which was a good thing. 

A bone to pick is choosing Louisiana (19) ahead of LSU (20) — really, that school doesn't come within two or three touchdowns of beating the Tigers — and taking Coastal Carolina (23) and Liberty (24) seriously.

The Huskies are ranked just ahead of Notre Dame (15), Florida (16), Wisconsin (17) and Lane Kiffin's Ole Miss (18).

Lake's guys are one of three Pac-12 teams included in this early beauty pageant, joining USC (9) and Oregon (13). 

USC, it should be noted, won't play the UW or Oregon this regular season, which is a scheduling gift. 

The complete ESPN poll and story can be viewed here.

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