Dear Washington: It's time to start pulling your weight

This was supposed to be a story about Oregon State, but the Huskies were unimpressive enough Friday night that we had to pivot

SEATTLE — Can you imagine if Jonathan Smith had Michael Penix Jr. to work with? 

I mean, the guy has cooled from his early-season Heisman hype, but the Washington quarterback is something to watch. He’s athletic, slippery in the pocket and can absolutely zing it down field with that chicken-wing delivery. He’s a little erratic, but put him on that Oregon State team, the one that seemingly does everything well but throw the ball? It’s not crazy to think the Beavers could be tuning in Tuesday nights with at least a little interest in the playoff rankings.

Alas, Penix is a Husky and that alone proved to be the difference in a 24-21 loss Friday night that felt only a few throws to open receivers short of becoming Oregon State’s first win as a ranked team since 2012. 

Washington practically tried to give the thing away. The Huskies committed nine penalties and repeatedly kept drives alive for an inept Oregon State offense. With no threat of the pass, the Beavers still rushed for 175 yards and led going into the fourth quarter with the 10th-best roster in the Pac-12 matched up against the 3rd. 

Yet the Seattle audience is eating it up.

To be fair, you can’t really blame them. The Huskies have been largely irrelevant much of the last two decades, spare an impressive run with Chris Petersen that produced the Pac-12’s last appearance in the College Football Playoff in 2016. A three-point win over the No. 23 team in the country with the wind whipping through Husky Stadium? That’s a better outcome than most nights for a program 13 games over .500 since the start of the century. Being there in person will be a heck of a memory for the fans that filled Husky Stadium just beyond half capacity. 

“For the Huskies, their 24-21 triumph over Oregon State on Friday was surely that, the signature victory of the Kalen DeBoer era and one that leaves a multitude of possibilities for even more glory ahead,” read the Seattle Times.

And yeah, sure. But I didn’t really get the sense in Smith’s postgame press conference that the Oregon State coach felt like the Beavers put up a signature fight.

“Credit to those guys to finish the game better than we did,” Smith said of Washington. 

What he couldn’t say is, credit to Washington for having a quarterback who can throw the ball down field. 

What he’d never say is, hey Washington fans, maybe think twice about investing in traveling to Eugene later this week.

Seriously, as the Beavers and Huskies slugged it out in their fight for hierarchy in the Pac-12’s best of the rest, Oregon’s just toying with its opponents. In this week’s installment of “Bo Nix makes the internet look foolish,” the quarterback passed for a touchdown, rushed for a touchdown and caught a touchdown in No. 6 Oregon’s 49-10 win over Colorado. The dark horse label is old news — Nix is right in the thick of the Heisman race and I don’t know if I’d recommend paying to watch what he and this Oregon offense are going to do to the Huskies.

Pompous? Homerish? Let’s talk after Saturday. But Oregon’s been in a different class this season, decade and, well, century. Want a fun stat? Take out Chip Kelly’s four years at Oregon — one of the most concentrated stretches of winning in conference history — and take out the Tyrone Willingham four years for Washington — one of the most concentrated stretches of losing in UW history — and the Ducks have still won 28 more games since 2000.

These programs aren’t close and it’s time for Washington to start holding up its end of the bargain. Yes, UW has had significant success with its volleyball, softball and women’s basketball programs. Its campus is beautiful and resides in one of the country’s premier cities, the type that brings out visiting players’ camera phones as they tour through the streets before the game. Seattle is booming, but when it comes to the college sports Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff cares about, the Huskies have been to one men’s basketball NCAA Tournament in the last decade and a “signature win” for the football team comes against an opponent that couldn’t muster 100 passing yards Friday.

“Guys were resilient,” DeBoer said after the win. And he’s not wrong. Oregon State is a fundamentally sound team with a great defense that has one giant flaw. The weather wasn’t great. Washington doesn’t win that game under Jimmy Lake and at 6-3 the Huskies are miles away from last season’s meltdown against the Ducks.

But coming into the 114th meeting between the Ducks and Huskies this week in Eugene, why does it feel like the gap between these two teams is still growing?

It was only six years ago that the Huskies scored 70 points inside Autzen Stadium in the most embarrassing loss in Oregon history. That game should have cooked the Ducks and cemented Washington’s spot atop the Pac-12 North for the next decade.

Oregon’s on its fourth head coach since that debacle.

The records since?

Oregon: 52-24

Washington: 46-26

That includes three consecutive wins for the Ducks in the series, which comes after a two-year Washington streak interrupted Oregon’s run of a dozen in a row.

Because of its location, UW will always curry favor as a sleeping giant. But as the conference has taken its licks and its membership is set to decrease, only half of that is true. Pac-12 (10?) relevance requires another team other than Oregon stringing together a decade-plus of success, and UW seemingly has all the tools to do it. But they haven’t, and every year the Don James era gets a little bit further in the rear view.

When USC and UCLA leave for the Big Ten, the North becomes the stewards of the conference.

Oregon can pull its weight.

Washington?

Let’s hope the Beavers can find a quarterback just in case.

— Tyson Alger