Washington fans are furious, and they want a name attached to it. Fine, here's mine: the offensive line's reputation and the program's spine deserve the heat this week.
The record book says Minnesota 27, Washington 24, and that score flattens a game that wasn't close for long stretches Saturday night at Husky Stadium. The Gophers came in as an 11-point road underdog and treated that spread like an insult. Drake Lindsey opened the game completing his first eight throws and had three touchdown passes to three different receivers by halftime. Minnesota led 21-10 at the break, and that lead came from a team that had a plan and executed it against a supposedly superior roster.
Then came the part that should keep Fisch up at night: his offensive line, the same group that spent the offseason talking about chasing the nation's top O-line award, got run over. Minnesota sacked Demond Williams Jr. seven times and held Washington to next to nothing on the ground. A unit that wanted to be the best in the country turned in its worst performance of the season on national television, in a game the Huskies were favored to win. That's where the accountability conversation should start. Chris Petersen isn't walking out of retirement to fix this by Thursday.
Williams, for his part, did what a $4-million quarterback is supposed to do: he kept his team alive, throwing for two touchdowns and adding a rushing score late to make it 27-24 with under two minutes left. He also threw two interceptions in Huskies territory, the kind of turnovers that hand a game away against a team that came ready to take it. Washington got the ball back one more time, but Minnesota's punter buried the Huskies at their own 2-yard line with three seconds left. Minnesota's special teams finished what its offense and defense started.
Minnesota outplayed Washington for almost the entire night. Minnesota's staff got its quarterback rolling early and built a lead before Washington's crowd even settled in, then made real halftime adjustments to hold on. You can be furious about a missed flag on the final defensive stand. You can be furious that Washington was favored at home and lost anyway. None of that changes the fact that Minnesota deserved this.
Washington isn't firing Jedd Fisch over one Big Ten opener in September, even a bad one, even a nationally embarrassing one. Programs that fire coaches four games into a season over a loss to a team that outplayed them for three quarters are programs that never build anything, they just keep pulling the fire alarm. Fisch is 3-1. That's nothing to hang a résumé on, and it's nothing that gets a coach fired either.
What he doesn't get is a pass. He built this roster, he hired this staff, and he let an offensive line that bragged about being the best in the country get shredded by seven sacks in a game his team was supposed to win comfortably. If that keeps happening, at USC next week and beyond, the argument changes. It's not there yet. But Fisch has used up whatever benefit of the doubt this loss earned him, and the next one that looks like it belongs to him alone will be different.
