Inside The Huskies

Russell Davis II Injured, Lost for Season Before Oregon Game

The junior edge rusher ended up appearing in just three Husky outings.

Dan Raley

Edge rusher Russell Davis II, shown sacking UCLA quarterback Ethan Garbers, was lost for the season with a recent injury.
Edge rusher Russell Davis II, shown sacking UCLA quarterback Ethan Garbers, was lost for the season with a recent injury. / Steven Bisig-Imagn Images

EUGENE, Oregon -- In preparing for the Oregon game, Russell Davis II had a week much like his University of Washington football team -- it was doomed from the start.

The 6-foot-3, 234-pound junior edge rusher went down with an unspecified injury in practice four days before the rivalry game against the Ducks, will need surgery and was lost for the rest of the season, Husky coach Jedd Fisch acknowledged in his postgame media session following the UW's 49-21 loss on Saturday.

"He will not be back for the bowl game," Fisch said. "He's going to have to get operated on. We'll see him back in three months maybe."

Davis was coming off a 3-sack, 1-forced fumble performance in a 31-19 win over UCLA in the previous outing that brought him Big Ten co-Defensive Player of the Week accolades. Against the Bruins, he basically was unblockable. Yet he wasn't able to see if he could top it against Oregon.

The son of a former Seattle Seahawks defensive lineman, Davis played in just three games for the Huskies after transferring from Arizona. In fall camp, he suffered some sort of injury that left him on crutches initially.

He missed the UW's first eight games while in recovery and with Fisch's staff choosing to let him play in no more than four outings to preserve his redshirt status and enable him to play two full seasons in Montlake.

The Huskies badly could have used him against Oregon. They had no defensive pressure, no sacks, no one step up in giving up 458 yards of total offense and seven touchdowns.

Instead, the UW had to go without arguably its two best edge rushers in Zach Durfee and Davis, who were able to demonstrate only brief moments of their playmaking ability while dealing with near season-long injuries.

The Huskies had zero sacks against Oregon, which enabled quarterback Dillon Gabriel to complete 16 of 23 passes for 209 yards and 2 touchdowns and lead the No. 1-ranked Ducks to their 12th victory in as many outings while headed for the Big Ten championship game and certainly a CFP playoff spot. .

For the latest UW football and basketball news, go to si.com/college/washington

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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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