Trice Is On a Roll for Huskies — But Why Didn't It Begin in 2021?

The UW edge rusher likely could have been a force even sooner.

With every major accident scene, investigations go on for months, if not years, trying to figure out exactly what happened. 

In periodically re-examining the University of Washington football team's head-on collision of a 2021 season, some things still don't add up.

Such as, why was Bralen Trice merely a reserve edge rusher for the first 10 games back then?

"I believe I should have played more," the Arizona native said on Tuesday, "but I'm not going to stick on that too much much."

Today, the 6-foot-4, 274-pound Trice is a serious All-America candidate, a returning first-team All-Pac-12 selection and a guy teeming with star power and playmaking ability.

Two years ago, Trice's return from an opt-out season during the COVID pandemic was loudly trumpeted by then edge-rusher coach Ikaika Malloe, who famously predicted, "Without putting so much pressure on him, Bralen will be probably better than Joe Tryon."

Tryon, of course, went from the UW to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as an NFL first-round draft pick.

Yet Trice was relegated to reserve duty during much of that 4-8 season in 2021, even with Zion Tupuola-Fetui getting a late start while recovering from an Achilles tear and fellow starting edge rusher Ryan Bowman going down at midseason with a shoulder injury. 

In his third UW career game, Trice ran 72 yards with a fumble recovery to score against Arkansas State, but still he came off the bench.

Throughout much of that 2021 personnel shuffle, Jimmy Lake's Husky coaching staff chose to lead with Cooper McDonald, now at San Diego State, who, while a decent athlete, was no Bralen Trice. Not then, not now. Try and find McDonald in the latest NFL draft assessments.

It wasn't until Lake was fired and ZTF suffered a season-ending concussion that the Huskies made Trice the starter for the final two games of the 2021 season against Colorado and Washington State — and he's never come out of the lineup since.

"My coaches made their decisions and they were my coaches, and I appreciate them for their work," Trice said diplomatically of the Lake staff. "I don't have much to say about it. I appreciate what my coaches taught me back then and I appreciate my coaches now and the opportunities they've given me."

Edge-rusher coach Eric Schmidt, however, readily acknowledged eyebrows were raised when he and the rest of Kalen DeBoer's staff took over and saw just 20 sacks on the 2021 defensive ledger.

Schmidt credits the Husky strength and conditioning staff led by Ron McKeefery for getting everyone in shape, noting how graduated edge rusher Jeremiah Martin took advantage and became a far different athlete and a much more disruptive presence.

The new Husky defensive scheme introduced, according to Schmidt, also had a lot to do with shaking things up. Trice piled up 9 sacks, Martin 8.5 and the defense 37 collectively — nearly double the season before — with a more aggressive approach.

"Our mantra in there is we're going to get more at-bats rushing the passer than anyone else in the country," Schmidt said. "We're not sitting at the line of scrimmage trying to react and get in the blocks. We're running off the ball and we're going to play that attack style all day long."

Finally, Trice, while physically gifted, simply wants to be great and he's let everyone know it with his hard-driving mindset, his practice habits and his leadership.

"I've been real happy with the way he's handled his business and how he's practicing right now," Schmidt said. "He's going to have a huge year."

Trice is coming off a superlative 2022 campaign and, who knows, maybe it could have been consecutive highly productive seasons had the Lake staff turned him loose. 

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