SI Agrees with ESPN That Huskies are Preseason Top 25 Team

General consensus among media outlets is that Jimmy Lake's football team should be nationally ranked.

Results are coming in from more precincts.

Sports Illustrated, the mother ship for Husky Maven, released its preseason top 25 ranking and slotted the University of Washington football team 15th in the nation — one position lower than ESPN had it.

The attraction to the Huskies, who played just four games during the pandemic season under the guidance of first-year coach Jimmy Lake, is the overabundance of returning starters. 

Even with wide receiver Ty Jones' puzzling departure this week, the UW brings back 19 players who were in the opening lineup in its last game against Stanford.

SI senior writer Pat Forde had this to say about the Huskies:

"Jimmy Lake’s debut season as head coach lasted all of four games, three of them wins, but he does welcome back almost every key contributor from that team. The entire starting offense is expected to return, though there could be a competition at quarterback between holdover starter Dylan Morris and highly touted incoming freshman Sam Huard. (The Huard name goes back a long way at Washington.) Most of the impact players on the Pac-12’s top defense were sophomores last year, so the Huskies should be good on that side of the ball again as well."

The Huskies, who open next season against Montana on Sept. 4, are one of three Pac-12 teams included in SI's poll, all turning up in the second 10, joining USC at 13th and Oregon at 16th. 

In the video, Lake is shown discussing the UW's desire to play in a bowl game last season, a situation that eventually was wiped out by a COVID-19 outbreak on 

SI chooses Alabama to repeat as the national champion, followed by, in this order, by Clemson, Georgia, Oklahoma, Ohio State, Cincinnati, Iowa State, Iowa, Texas A&M, Notre Dame.

Note the back-to-back placement of the Iowa schools, something that's probably never happened before in a football poll. 

SI's second 10 involves North Carolina, Indiana, USC, Florida, Washington, Oregon, Coastal Carolina, Penn State, Texas and LSU.

In both the ESPN and SI early rankings, the Huskies are picked ahead of the Ducks.

The final five in the SI poll are Wisconsin, Ball State, West Virginia, San Jose State, North Carolina State, a group noteworthy by the inclusion of San Jose State, a program on the rise after decades of floundering.

One of the coaches for the Spartans is former Husky linebacker Scott White (2003-06), now in his third season as linebackers coach for head coach Brent Brennan, who was a UW graduate assistant coach for Rick Neuheisel (1999).

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