NEW ORLEANS — Michael Penix Jr. couldn’t miss if he tried Monday night at the Sugar Bowl. After his left arm surgically dismantled Texas’ defense and lifted Washington into the national championship, the Heisman Trophy runner-up grabbed a memento before exiting the Superdome shortly after 1 a.m. Tuesday: a placard emblazoned with his name.
If you didn’t take Penix seriously this season, that’s a shame. If you didn’t view the Huskies as a national title contender, you should today. Penix showed the world why the Pac-12 program bucks outside perceptions while winning eight straight one-possession games.
“Mike is a legend. Straight legend, man,” Washington receiver Rome Odunze said.
Penix was masterful in the 37-31 win in front of the pro-Texas crowd of 68,791 at the College Football Playoff semifinal. He threw for 430 yards and two touchdowns, completing 29 of 38 attempts. He whipped frozen ropes and darts over the middle in tight coverages, like his 29-yard touchdown pass to Ja’Lynn Polk in the second quarter. He also found his receivers in stride with bombs down the sideline, like his 32-yarder to Odunze that set up a critical field goal late in the game.
No Texas coverage was impossible to break, and no pass rush was too difficult to avoid. The Huskies’ offense seemed unstoppable as long as Penix threw the ball. Nearly every pass seemed perfect. He completed 12 straight passes during a prolific second and third quarter in which Washington piled up 315 yards and built a 31-21 lead. More than half of his throws in the first half were explosive gains (six for 226 yards). He was perfect across the middle and outside the left hashmark on his deepest targets, completing all five pass attempts beyond 15 yards for 161 yards.
He wasn’t sacked, and the usually stationary quarterback rushed for 31 of Washington’s 102 yards against the formidable Texas defensive line.
NFL executives drooled while Washington fans barked. It was quarterbacking at its finest.
“That’s what it looks like in practice every day,” Washington coach Kalen DeBoer told 247Sports. “We’ve been indoors a lot practicing and when you get indoors and there’s no other conditions, I mean, it’s just going to be what you saw tonight: just putting the ball right where it needs to be. The guys were locked in.”
If the left-handed Penix looked like this all season — the 430 yards Monday were the most since Week 2 — then why didn’t the nation’s leading passer on an undefeated team win the Heisman Trophy in December? It makes one wonder.
“He is the Heisman winner in our eyes,” said right tackle Roger Rosengarten, Penix’s blind-side protector.
“That’s over, man. It don’t matter,” Penix said. “Right now, man, we’re looking to win the national championship. That’s been my goal since Day 1. You won’t find an interview or anything of me saying that I want to win the Heisman.”
Doubts? The nation has had a few about Washington and the Pac-12. West Coast football has been demeaned for the better part of 20 years, but Washington is on the cusp of winning the conference’s first national title since USC in 2005. Sadly, the battle cry arrives amid the death throes of the Pac-12. Ten schools scatter this summer for new homes in the ACC, Big Ten and Big 12 next season, leaving the Pac-12’s Washington State and Oregon State to wither on the vine.
A date with No. 1 Michigan is up next Jan. 8 in Houston. The Huskies (14-0) and Wolverines (14-0) haven’t won a national title — or at least claimed a championship — since the 1990s. It’s fitting that the sport, on the precipice of major shifts tied to conference alignment, will end the four-team playoff era with two first-timers who will be Big Ten rivals starting next season.
“It’s the early Big Ten Championship,” joked offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb.
Who would have thought it was possible a year ago? It’s a crazy world, college football.
“Surreal,” Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff said Monday as he watched the Huskies celebrate on a field covered in purple-and-white confetti. “It’s surreal. It’s upsetting that some of our schools weren’t more patient. If they saw what we were building it would have paid off.”
For now, Washington will carry the Pac-12 banner. The Big Ten can wait.
“We’re playing for the Pac-12,” Washington athletics director Troy Dannen said. “A lot of things happened but to to be in a position for the league to win the national championship is a huge deal.”
What will it matter if the league doesn’t exist in a year? Legacy still matters, even in this crazy time of selfish maneuvers.
“The league has produced so many great players and teams throughout the years,” linebacker Alphonzo Tuputala said. “This is for the Pac.”
It wasn’t easy for the Huskies in the Superdome, but not much has been this season. Close calls are the standard. Heck, their offense didn’t score in a win against Pac-12 dweller Arizona State. In the Sugar Bowl, the Huskies held off a furious Texas rally led by quarterback Quinn Ewers in the final 90 seconds. He led the Longhorns to the brink of an improbable comeback, driving the length of the field in the final minute, but his fourth-and-11 pass into the end zone from the 13-yard line was broken up by Elijah Jackson as time expired.
Yes, Texas is back, but just not quite all the way back. The consolation prize is a fresh start in the SEC.
The Sugar Bowl served as the backdrop of the sport’s ongoing extreme makeover. Two elite programs on the move to new homes, still wearing the patches of their jilted temporary conference partners in the Big 12 and Pac-12.
What-if scenarios rule the sport more than ever. Nothing seems improbable in the Age of Metamorphosis. Conference realignment, player compensation and unlimited access to the transfer portal. The sport has never been more chaotic or perplexing on the micro and macro levels.
What if Texas and Oklahoma didn’t spark this new age in 2021 by forming a clandestine partnership to exit the Big 12 for the SEC?
What if USC and UCLA didn’t secretly align with the Big Ten in the summer of 2022?
What if the Huskies lost one — just one — of their 10 straight games decided by 10 points or less?
What if the Longhorns scored more than three points on their final seven opportunities inside Washington’s 13-yard line?
“This season took a couple of years off of people’s lives,” said Odunze, who caught six passes for a game-high 125 yards. “It definitely did off of mine.”
What if Penix didn’t transfer from Indiana to Washington to reunite with DeBoer, his former offensive coordinator? Shoulder injuries and two ACL tears prematurely ended all four of his years with the Hoosiers, and yet here he is in his sixth season leading the most potent offense in the sport.
“Like, if I would say that I had to get hurt four times for me to get to this point, that’s not something that I would have thought of,” Penix said. “But, man, I feel like it was all worth it. I feel like everything I’ve been through is definitely worth it and shaped me into the person, the player and the man I am today.”
As frustrating as the what-ifs and naysayers can be at times, it’s also what makes the sport so beautiful. All stories need drama to keep us interested.
“The bigger the stage you put him on, the more you tell him he can’t do it, the better he is,” Grubb said. “He’s still growing as a quarterback. As good as Mike is, his best football is still ahead. He’s gonna be really special on Sundays (in the NFL).”
There’s only one thing left to do for the Huskies, and that’s win a national championship. For DeBoer, it’s old hat. He won three national titles as a head coach at Sioux Falls in the NAIA, and though he’s only been a head coach in the FBS for four years, he’s won 82.2% of his games.
His Huskies will be underdogs for the third time in their last four games when they play Michigan next week.
“I hope Vegas gets a big, big spread on us again,” Rosengarten said. “We’re ready for it.”
If you’re wondering, the Huskies opened as a 4.5-point underdog Tuesday.
“We prove everybody wrong time and time again,” said Bralen Trice, who had two sacks and forced a fumble against the Longhorns. “And we’ll continue to do that. This is what we do as dawgs, at UDub up in Seattle. We’re bred for this. We prepare for this. And you can overlook us all you want, but we go out there and we prove everybody wrong every time.”
Brandon Marcello is a national college football reporter for 247Sports. You can follow him on X (@bmarcello).
