Inside The Huskies

Pressure Mounts for Penix to Bring Home CFP Berth, Heisman and It Shows

The Husky quarterback recently has displayed a little wear and tear as the stakes get higher.

Dan Raley

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In postgame interview sessions, University of Washington quarterback Michael Penix Jr. often is upbeat, playful, a ready quipster.

On Saturday, the face of this Husky football team looked more spent than usual following a final-play 24-21 Apple Cup victory over Washington State, coughed a number of times and was even dismissive of a question that didn't suit him, the latter a first for him.

Could a long, pressure-packed season be getting to the high-profile QB some? 

Entering his 13th game week, Penix will carry the weight of the UW world on his shoulders, entrusted with leading his unbeaten team to a Pac-12 championship, where a positive outcome would secure a College Football Playoff berth, the second for the program. And, dare we say, there's this little matter of the Heisman Trophy to deal with, too.

After 25 Husky games, the 6-foot-3, 213-pound Penix finds himself squeezed on all sides like never before, as if he has his five 300-plus-pound offensive linemen sitting on him all at once. 

While the Huskies lined up for a potential game-winning field goal against WSU, Penix caught the attention of the FOX-TV cameras and its national viewing audience when he was shown with his head wedged inside an equipment chest, unable to watch the play unfold 

Asked about this later, he responded quietly yet firmly, treating it as a private matter that he wasn't going to explain, "It was just me. Next question. I'm good. Appreciate it."

While Penix generally will insist he's a strong personality and can handle just about anything thrown at him, the expectations have reached a far more uncomfortable level. The quarterback no doubt understands the stakes have never been higher for him.

Now imagine if the UW finally loses and all of the air goes out of this national championship push, leaving the Huskies to regroup and finish up in either the Cotton or Fiesta bowls, which would be a big letdown for everyone involved. It could happen.

He doesn't want that. Nobody in Montlake wants that, notably Kalen DeBoer's coaching staff, which bet an entire season on one play against the Cougars by going for it on fourth-and-1 from its 29 with just over a minute left on the clock. Rather than consider losing or even settling for overtime, the Huskies ever so boldly, with Penix at the point of attack, went for the win and everything that comes with it.

Yet Oregon, even after losing to the UW 36-33 in Seattle six weeks ago, is pegged as a nine-point favorite entering Friday's title game at Allegiant Stadium on the Vegas strip. In the odds-makers' minds, the once-beaten Ducks supposedly have gotten much better while the Huskies have not. People only have comparative scores to make that assessment, which is hardly a true barometer.

For that matter, Penix currently is considered no better than the third-best Heisman candidate in some circles because his stats were down in a pair of highly competitive games against then-No. 10 Oregon State and state rival Washington State. Meantime, Oregon's Bo Nix and LSU's Jayden Daniels each supplied a 6-touchdown passing performance against a greatly overmatched opponent in Arizona State and Georgia State, respectively, and they supposedly moved past him. Georgia State, really?

The Huskies have had a handful of players previously finish in the top 10 in the Heisman voting, with Penix coming in eighth a year ago, and 1991 defensive tackle Steve Emtman landing as high as fourth. Yet no UW player has been a serious candidate to the very end such as this left-handed quarterback. Heisman voting already has begun. How many people will cast their ballots before the league championship games?

In recent weeks, Penix has had to deal with a wind storm, a rain storm and a lingering, flu-like illness, and proceed without making any excuses. Yet all of those disruptions lately seem to have taken a toll on his passing accuracy and rhythm.  

Against the Cougars, he wasn't anywhere near his usual pinpoint self, overthrowing numerous balls by a wide margin while completing 18 of 33 passes for 204 yards and 2 scores. 

However, the beauty of Penix is he can just turn on the greatness at times — see the first two Oregon games. He'll be playing indoors in a controlled environment in Vegas, too, with no more weather elements to contend with. You can never count him out.

And, again, he stands 1-0 this season against Oregon and Nix, 2-0 over the past 13 months, which is something even those super confident challengers from Eugene can't readily dismiss.

It's unquestioned that Oregon has unparalleled facilities and maybe the best roster top to bottom when comparing these Northwest rivals, whereas the Huskies, relying on win-loss records so far, possess the top coach and the most elite quarterback. This championship matchup will go a long way to further determining the latter two categories.

Much of the coming football fervor rests on the shoulders of Penix, who more than one Husky team follower felt acted strangely in his late-game and postgame actions at the Apple Cup, especially after seeing him as a relaxed and cheerful TV pitchman. Yet it's more likely this was just the pressure building on a 23-year-old guy treated as a program messiah who faces the most important week of his college football career.

"It was back to back to back," Penix said of continuously playing multiple ranked opponents. "It was always the team we were playing and you can't take no credit away from those teams that we played, but it just made us find a way to win. In those tough moments, I think it shows this team's character and will to win."

Penix is headed to a city that tends to eat people alive who try to get ahead in life in a hurry, but he's never been afraid to put himself all out there and see what happens.

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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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