Is Fisch delivering on goal of UW Huskies’ best recruiting class ever?
Jul 9, 2024, 1:58 PM
UW Huskies head coach Jedd Fisch during a spring press conference on March 27. (Alika Jenner/Getty Images)
(Alika Jenner/Getty Images)
After taking the helm of the UW Huskies’ program in mid-January, new head football coach Jedd Fisch challenged his staff to make history with the Dawgs’ 2025 recruiting class.
Five things to know about the UW Huskies’ 2025 recruiting class
“I want the University of Washington’s class of 2025 to be the best recruiting class Washington’s ever had,” Fisch said during a Feb. 2 appearance on Seattle Sports’ Brock and Salk.
Fisch is doing his best to deliver that lofty goal.
The Huskies’ 2025 class currently ranks No. 17 in the 247Sports Composite rankings. That’s just two spots off UW’s best-ever 247Sports recruiting ranking, when it finished No. 15 in 2019.
UW’s 2025 class currently has 21 commits, including six four-star prospects. It’s headlined by four-star Bethel High School linebacker Zaydrius Rainey-Sale, who is the top-ranked 2025 recruit in Washington and one of five in-state commits in the UW class. The Huskies also have a commit from four-star tight end Baron Naone, who is the top-ranked 2025 recruit in Oregon.
In addition, UW’s 2025 commits include eight of the top 100 recruits in California and three-star recruits from other talent-rich states like Texas, Florida and Alabama.
“They’re sitting at No. 17 in the country right now,” former UW quarterback and current FOX college football analyst Brock Huard said Monday during Brock and Salk’s Blue 88 segment. “And they’re doing it without Phil Knight’s pocketbook (like Oregon), without Ohio State’s pocketbook, without some of their peers’ pocketbooks. There still is money thrown around – there’s no question. But they’re doing it with an unbelievable amount of effort across the country, casting that net down in the Big Ten far and wide sitting there at No. 17 in the country right now.”
The 47-year-old Fisch has a tough job ahead of him at UW, which returns just two starters from last year’s team that reached the College Football Playoff national championship game. The Huskies had 10 players selected in April’s NFL Draft and lost six players to the transfer portal after former head coach Kalen DeBoer’s sudden departure for Alabama just four days after the national title game.
Fisch comes to Washington after engineering a massive turnaround at Arizona. He needed just three seasons to transform the last-place Wildcats into one of the Pac-12’s best teams last fall, including a No. 11 finish in the final AP Top 25 poll that marked the program’s best season-ending ranking since 1998.
Much of that success stemmed from Fisch’s ability to recruit, as he hauled in Arizona’s all-time best recruiting class in 2022.
Now, Fisch looks to achieve a similar feat on Montlake. So far, he’s off to a good start.
Listen to the full Blue 88 segment at this link or in the audio player near the top of this story. Tune in to Brock and Salk weekdays from 6 to 10 a.m. or find the podcast on the Seattle Sports app.
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