Carson Bruener: UW Huskies love to ‘continue to prove them wrong’

Jan 6, 2024, 2:42 PM

Bucky Irving of the Oregon Ducks is tackled by Carson Bruener of the Washington Huskies on Oct. 14, 2023. (Steph Chambers/Getty Images)

(Steph Chambers/Getty Images)

BY BRANDON GUSTAFSON

Seattle Sports

The UW Huskies have played the role of “cardiac kids” this season, winning each of their last 10 games by 10 points or fewer.

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Rather than that being a negative, the Huskies see it as a positive, as senior linebacker Carson Bruener told Seattle Sports’ Wyman and Bob on Thursday ahead of Washington’s National Championship Game against Michigan.

“I feel like going into any game, we know that just throughout college football and with our schedule in the Pac-12 and how great teams are in that conference, really any game can sway any single way,” he said. “But we have confidence in ourselves, the coaches have the confidence in us, we know we can go out there and beat anybody anytime, anywhere and all that … Having those close games I feel like has helped us, especially later throughout the season just kind of not really panicking and just kind of remembering what our job is and just going out there and trusting in ourselves.”

Playing in all those close games has also led the Huskies to being the underdogs in some big games of late, such as Monday’s Sugar Bowl win over Texas and last month’s Pac-12 Championship Game against Oregon. The Dawgs are again underdogs on Monday against Michigan.

“We’ve talked about it a bunch on just a lot of people just continuously counting us out, just kind of game in game out. And it’s been nice just be able to continue to prove them wrong these games and really just coming in (to this game),” Bruener said.” But at the end of the day, we always talk about it doesn’t matter what media and outside people really say. It’s just about this team, this unit just going out there and really trusting in ourselves and just doing the job that that we know we can do.”

UW is in Bruener’s blood as his dad, Mark, was a star tight end for the team in the 1990s before a 13-year NFL career. The older Bruener was part of the 1991 UW team that beat Michigan in the Rose Bowl as part of a national championship season.

“We’ve talked about it quite a bit throughout the last few days since the big win,” the younger Bruener said on Thursday. “It’s been pretty cool just to kind of be able to talk to him and really just throughout the year hearing similarities that he talked about being a part of that team compared to me now being a part of this team this year. It’s really cool just kind of comparing and contrasting and really seeing like how much you’ve really got to put in to get to the point that we both were able to get at it. We’ve got one more to go.”

That one last game is just days away. Bruener shared what he sees from the Wolverines’ offense that he’ll be facing in Houston.

“I feel like they just kind of work together as a unit really well. They’ve got great offensive linemen throughout the whole board, and one thing is they’re just really good at kind of comboing up and really just working as a unit itself,” he said. “They have a great quarterback, they’ve got a great pair of running backs as well as receivers. But I mean, once again, it’s football. We’re all here, we’re all playing the same sport … We’ve just really got to go out there trusting ourselves and I mean, we’re here for a reason.”

Listen to Wyman and Bob’s full interview with Carson Bruener at this link or in the player near the top of this story.