PULLMAN, Wash. — An unmistakable scent permeated the chilly postgame celebration here Saturday, and it didn’t take long to identify the culprit — or culprits, plural, to be more precise. A small handful of Washington fans partied on the Martin Stadium turf with cigars clamped between their teeth. At least one player grabbed one for a satisfying puff or two. Ryan Grubb, the Huskies offensive coordinator, tweeted a photo of himself with a cigar of his own, posing in the visitor’s locker room with offensive linemen Troy Fautanu and Roger Rosengarten, the accompanying text touting Washington’s “9-0” home record this season.
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That’s 7-0 at Husky Stadium, plus victories in Eugene and Pullman. Winning makes for flexible mathematics.
Hey Husky Nation I’m down with this Apple Cup thing!! 9-0 at Home this year!!!☔️☔️☔️ LFG pic.twitter.com/c3IzScIehq
— Ryan Grubb (@GrubbRyan) November 27, 2022
Washington took back the Apple Cup on Saturday night, a 51-33 win over Washington State that avenged last season’s humiliating defeat at Husky Stadium and secured UW’s first 10-win season since 2018. The Huskies (10-2, 7-2 in Pac-12) haven’t lost in Pullman since 2012, winning the four games since by 18, 28, 13 and now 18 points, dispatching the Cougars behind an offensive explosion befitting the way first-year coach Kalen DeBoer has remade this resurgent program.
So their fans celebrated on the field, posing for photos with players and encircling the team as they hoisted the Apple Cup trophy. Players chanted: “Whose house? Dawgs house!” They broke out the famed “Say Who?” chant right there, in front of everybody. After throwing for 485 yards and three touchdowns, Michael Penix Jr. conducted a TV interview with a small crowd behind him chanting “Heisman! Heisman! Heisman!” That was shortly after he shared an embrace with his grandmother.
“I feel like I’m playing like a kid,” Penix said, reflecting on a college career marred by injuries until this season. “All four years of college, this time (of year), I was at home watching my guys or on the sideline.”
The Huskies won’t win the Pac-12 championship this season, but that’s not the headline here, because Saturday’s win means the Rose Bowl is very much still in play. At 7-2 in conference, UW finishes in a three-way tie for second place with Oregon and Utah. The Utes emerged from the tiebreaker process as USC’s opponent in the conference title game, and that might be an ideal outcome for Washington, believe it or not. If No. 6 USC beats Utah, the Trojans would likely be assured of a berth in the College Football Playoff. In that circumstance, the Rose Bowl would likely invite the next-highest ranked Pac-12 team by the CFP committee — a position No. 13 Washington would be all but guaranteed, with No. 9 Oregon losing to No. 21 Oregon State and No. 14 Utah facing a potential fourth defeat.
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If the Utes beat the Trojans — as they did in Salt Lake City on Oct. 15 — then Utah would head to Pasadena and Washington’s path to the New Year’s Six (i.e. the Cotton Bowl) would become more difficult. That’s why coach Kalen DeBoer puts it like this: “That’s obviously stuff that I can’t control. We’ve put ourselves in a position to be excited about probably a great opportunity. Just need a few things to hopefully fall our way here the rest of the week, next week, and hopefully some of those great bowl-game opportunities can pop up.”
The fact that the Rose Bowl is even possible — and now is likely a single, plausible result away from actually happening — is the most stark example yet of just how much has changed at Washington since last season. The Huskies went from 4-8 to 10-2, from a team that averaged 21.5 points per game to one that dropped 51 points and 703 yards against perhaps the league’s top defense, on the road, in a rivalry game. DeBoer’s Huskies won at Oregon and WSU in the same season. They steamrolled a then-ranked Michigan State team in front of a raucous home crowd. Penix is having one of the greatest seasons ever by a UW quarterback. Save for some obvious defensive flaws and that disastrous October afternoon in Tempe — without it, the Huskies might be playing for a CFP bid on Friday — it’s hard to imagine how DeBoer could have endeared himself to this school and fan base to any greater degree.
This Apple Cup victory effectively functioned as a celebration of the Huskies’ new image and all the players who have brought them within one more domino of a New Year’s Six appearance. They totaled 703 yards of offense — 326 in the first half and 377 in the second, 485 passing and 218 rushing — against the conference leader in scoring defense, averaging a preposterous 10.5 yards per play. Penix threw for three touchdowns and ran for two others, including a double-lateral play on which he caught a toss from Jalen McMillan for a 30-yard score. McMillan and Rome Odunze combined for 307 yards receiving and two touchdowns, each of them using this Apple Cup to eclipse the 1,000-yard mark for the season, the first duo ever to accomplish that at UW in the same year. Wayne Taulapapa, the senior running back acquired via the transfer portal this offseason, capped the onslaught with a 40-yard touchdown run late in the fourth quarter that established his new single-game high of 126 yards rushing.
“When we hit milestones, I tend to look back on what it took to get there,” McMillan said. “I remember me and Rome and Ja’Lynn Polk, there would be days where I’d call them up, it’d be like 7 p.m., 6:30. It was late. I’d call them up and be like, ‘Let’s go catch JUGS, or let’s go work on the top of our routes.’”
For much of this chilly evening on the Palouse, the Apple Cup seemed destined for an all-time finish. Neither defense offered much resistance, as the teams combined for 630 yards in the first half. WSU kept its offense on the field by converting 4-of-4 on fourth downs before halftime, including a fake punt that keyed a touchdown drive. Cam Ward, WSU’s own transfer quarterback, escaped pressure to keep plays alive, most notably throwing a 34-yard touchdown to Robert Ferrel on 4th-and-10 to answer Penix’s 47-yard score to Odunze.
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“The fake punt and the three other fourth-down conversions were really what we felt was keeping them in it,” DeBoer said. “They had to throw all their punches, and we kept kind of responding. That was the difference in the first half, where if we can just keep them in check, keep them from converting those fourth-downs in the second half, we just knew the game would slowly come back to us.”
The Huskies punted just once all game, on their very first possession. They were otherwise stopped only when Cam Davis lost a fumble and Penix threw an inadvisable interception on first down from WSU’s 11 late in the third quarter.
As with Penix’s red zone interception at Oregon, this one had the feel of a game-changer, WSU trailing only 35-33 with a chance to take the lead. But Washington’s defense forced a three-and-out, prompting one of the Cougars’ three second-half punts, and Penix bounced back much the way he did in Eugene. He used a 41-yard completion to Polk to set up Odunze’s 5-yard touchdown run (a questionable pass interference call on third-and-10 also kept that drive alive) and used a 30-yard strike to Odunze on Washington’s next possession to set up a 20-yard field goal that finally put the Huskies ahead by multiple scores.
Penix completed 10 passes of 23 or more yards, including a 75-yard touchdown to McMillan on the first play of the second half. Now with 4,354 passing yards this season, Penix is a mere 104 yards shy of Cody Pickett’s school record set in 2002. This was Washington’s offense at its most explosive, featuring its best players, outgaining its opponent by 270 yards in spite of Ward’s dynamic playmaking and continued poor tackling by the Huskies.
After raising the trophy and celebrating in earnest on a rival’s home field for the second time this month, DeBoer walked toward the visitor’s locker room with his wife and two daughters. This was the first road game they were able to attend together this season, he said, so it was a special moment. Earlier this week, the school announced a contract extension and raise for DeBoer through 2028, reemphasizing its commitment to him before he’d ever coached his first Apple Cup. He repaid them by guiding the Huskies to their most yards ever against WSU — and third-most ever, against anybody — to put them in position for something greater.
“This is a place that my family and I have really enjoyed settling into here,” DeBoer said, “and I can’t wait to continue to build on what we’ve done this year.”
And to find out where those victory cigars might travel next.
(Photo: James Snook / USA Today)
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