If you look close enough, you can find irony in just about anything these days. Take USA TODAY Sports' latest college football power rankings, projecting the possibilities for all 134 FBS teams coming out of spring practice.
The University of Washington turned up 37th.
No real surprise here, considering the Huskies return just two starters from their 14-1, national runner-up team and are adjusting to Jedd Fisch's new coaching staff, one brought in to replace Kalen DeBoer and his guys now at Alabama or spread out across the college and NFL landscape.
For sure, the UW has a long ways to go to convince outsiders that it has accumulated enough firepower to be taken seriously once more as it enters the Big Ten this fall.
Where it gets real interesting with this USA TODAY Sports forecast, though, is the UW finds itself slotted three spots behind James Madison, a Sun Belt team coming off an 11-2 season, its own coaching change and the installation of a new starting quarterback.
What this suggests is Dylan Morris — the sixth-year senior who was encouraged to transfer out of the UW even before DeBoer's staff left town and find a new signal-calling gig — is about to have a better year with the Dukes than his former team will with Mississippi State transfer Will Rogers running the show in Montlake.
The USA TODAY Sports power rankings can be accessed here. Weird fact: this forecast has five teams ranked higher than the UW that lost to the Huskies in 2023.
Morris, still wearing a purple and gold color scheme for his new Virginia-based team, effortlessly slid into his role as the Dukes' No. 1 quarterback, seemed to ingratiate himself with his new teammates and was efficient throughout spring practice..
"Coming in, I knew things were going to have to accelerate pretty quickly, especially being a quarerback," he said after the James Madison spring game. "This is my fourth offense, so I've been able to learn pretty quickly. It's definitely been a change of pace for me and I think spring went very well."
Morris was the Huskies' starting quarterback in 2020 and 2021 before serving as a back-up to Michael Penix Jr. for the past two seasons. He committed to James Madison before the UW faced Michigan in the CFP title game in Houston and after the Dukes hired .coach Bob Chesney away from Holy Cross.
Of course, the only way to really settle this sort of discussion involving a Morris-led James Madison team and the reconfigured Huskies would be for them to play each other in a bowl game next season.
For the latest UW football and basketball news, go to si.com/college/washington
DAN RALEY
Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.
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