Coe: It’s finally time to say Huskies’ Fisch is here for 2026

I’m finally ready to say it.

Jedd Fisch will be the coach of the Washington Huskies football team for the 2026 season.

I know a few quick-witted folks read the headline of this story — “It’s Finally Time to Say Jedd Fisch Will Coach the Huskies in 2026” — and quipped to their significant other, their dog, or whoever else is willing to listen: “Yeah, maybe on January 1, 2026. But what about September of 2026?”

Hey, I was right there with you until today. Before Michigan hired Utah’s Kyle Whittingham on Friday to guide its program back toward the rails, my words sounded a lot like Fisch’s when people asked me if he’d be back next year. Fisch used a lot of present-tense words when answering questions about his future at UW. At his most recent press conference on Dec. 13 following a 38-10 win over Boise State in the Bucked Up LA Bowl Hosted by Gronk, Fisch said, “I expect to be here” in 2026.

That sounded like a softer response than a few days earlier, when he told KJR’s Dave “Softy” Mahler, “I will be coaching Washington in 2026.” What was going on in Fisch’s mind behind those words, none of us will ever know. It was interesting, though, that the Michigan job opened in between those two public statements.

For that reason, I’ve been reluctant to start breaking down in detail what the team might look like in 2026. When a coach leaves, the players often follow and/or scatter. While I was pretty sure Fisch would be back to coach a promising UW team next year, it seemed somewhat hypothetical without a Fisch extension with a massive buyout or some closure at Michigan. So, yeah, I wasn’t going to go too deep into who the left tackle might be in 2026 until I had some inkling that any of the potential candidates might still be on campus.

Others were willing to make that leap. There were no firm reports about Fisch ever talking with Michigan leadership. His name showed up on a lot of candidate lists, but usually a few spots down in the “if those nine guys say ‘no’” section.

While this is mostly my gut — significantly reinforced during the holiday season — talking, I believe pretty strongly that Fisch would have taken that job. I’m not saying he started packing, but he might have wondered if he still had any blue visors in storage if suddenly found himself in need of one.

While a mess today, I don’t need to put down my pie fork and use my other hand to count how many jobs in college football are better than the one in Ann Arbor. The Jim Harbaugh / Connor Stalions / Sherrone Moore mess is nothing a strong coach can’t clean up in an offseason. I don’t care where you’re coaching ball. If the 734 Ann Arbor area code pops up on your phone, you pick it up and listen.

But the folks at UM weren’t quite ready to call Fisch — at least not beyond a preliminary conversation. They may have seen that 13-10 loss at Wisconsin, and there was also too much of a connection with Harbaugh and Stalions from Fisch’s stint with the Wolverines as an assistant in 2015-16. So Michigan brought in one of the more rock-solid and safe hires possible in Whittingham, who jumped (or was he pushed?) off his legendary perch in Utah. The Utes will move forward with “coach in waiting” Morgan Scalley.

Side question: Does the “coach in waiting” plan ever end well?

Extension for Fisch?

Toward the end of the 2023 season, I became wary of the Kalen DeBoer situation. He brushed it off with one of the pages of the coachspeak bible, saying things along the lines of focusing on the postseason, etc. And he’d signed an extension after the 2022 season. While I thought he’d be back, a little voice in the corner of my brain whispered, “It’s no certainty until there’s another extension.” People were talking about DeBoer being the next Don James, and suddenly, one day he was wearing crimson.

It was a popular opinion when Fisch was hired that he wouldn’t stay on Montlake very long. He’d take the next step up, either a blue-blood college program or an NFL gig. Those opinions formed by a quick Google search of his job history, which shows 12 stops since 2010, as well as a festering wound from when DeBoer was ripped out of Seattle.

I don’t think any of that has changed. Washington is a very good college football job. But it’s not the NFL. And it’s not Alabama, Michigan, and a few other places.

How long will Fisch stay at Washington?

I believe Fisch’s quickest path to the NFL is to stay at UW for two more seasons. While there are no certainties, Washington has a chance to be pretty special in 2027. By then, the talented 2025 and 2026 offensive line recruits will be seasoned and able to hang with just about anyone. If Fisch hits double-digit wins at UW the next two years, the NFL might give him a call. A jump to another college job could add another year or two to his best-case scenario path to the pros.

Fisch, like most coaches, gets frustrated with the questions about his loyalty to his current job. All coaches move around a lot until they don’t. For Fisch, the questions about leaving for greener — or redder or bluer — pastures will continue for years. You are what your very long coaching resume says you are. Fisch’s name will come up in some fashion in at least one person’s mind for every job that opens. The bottom line is that the life span of a coach at one job seems to get shorter and shorter. The disparity of resources at different places grows at the same rate the patience of fan bases shrinks. To stay at a job for double-digit years, they must walk a very fine line of being too good to fire, but too bad for the next rung on the coaching ladder.

Expect a fun 2026

The bottom line is no one — not even Fisch himself — knows how long he’ll be here. So enjoy 2026 like it’s the last. Though there will be some portal comings and goings, the UW football team has a chance to be very good next fall. The coaching staff and player personnel departments have been reinforced. There’s young talent on the team that should take a step forward. While there may not be big splashes made in the portal, expect a few savvy additions to shore up areas of need, such as experience on the defensive line and the secondary.

We’ll dive into this more in the coming days, weeks and months, but it’s not crazy to think this team could make the College Football Playoff in 2026. I won’t make a bold prediction quite yet. For now, let’s just say, “I expect Washington to be good in 2026.”