Husky fans far and wide broke into a joyous celebration on Sunday night when quarterback Michael Penix Jr., seemingly with all sorts of immediate NFL opportunities within reach, announced he would return for the 2023 college football season.
Nobody does that. Everybody goes to the big show when they have the chance to make millions and brand themselves like never before.
Yet Penix chose to delay his pro football dreams in order to further refine his game and potentially put the University of Washington program in the conversation for just about every notable team and individual pursuit a year from now.
It was a feel-good moment for each and every UW follower, coach and player with the possible exception of two of the latter — Dylan Morris and Sam Huard.
While these reserve Husky quarterbacks no doubt were happy for their teammate and with the overall direction of the program is headed, it still had to be a personal gut punch.
Just when Morris and Huard might have thought they could use their newfound QB knowledge and revamped skill set gained from a year with offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb and compete against each other for the starting job in the spring, each faces the prospect of standing and watching for yet another season.
That might be way too much to ask of one or both of these players. Each just went 12 months of being loyal yet inactive soldiers as Penix captivated the fan base and college football followers everywhere with his left-handed magic.
Over 12 regular-season games, Penix took every meaningful snap with a game on the line except for one, when he got hurt at Arizona State and briefly had to come out — and Morris threw a 13-yard, fourth-quarter pass to Jalen McMillan and then returned to the UW bench area.
Yet there was no guarantee had Penix left following this season that only Morris and Huard would compete for the No. 1 job. The Huskies easily could have gone out and found another QB in the portal.
"I think everybody has to be realistic that it's competitive and we want to make the roster the best that we can," Grubb said last week. "I know we'll want to stay aggressive and if we have to make a move, we will."
In a year's time, Morris went from 11 games played to seven, and from 363 passing attempts to 16, and, of course from 15 starting assignments to none. Huard dropped from four games played and 42 passes attempted to just one outing and a pair of throws, and from one start to none. Morris has two seasons of eligibility remaining, Huard three.
It could be wishful thinking to expect that one or both of them will sit out another season, in a sense used only as a spare tire or an emergency option should Penix be unable to play at some point, which has been part of his college football history.
Still, the portal brings no guarantee for playing time or stardom on the rebound, it serves only as a place of refuge to start over as a player and get over the disappointment of being buried on a depth chart.
In picking Penix as the starter in fall camp, DeBoer and Grubb chose their words ever so carefully in describing how the competition played out and the corresponding talents of everyone involved, not wishing for either Morris or Huard to make a mad dash out of the program and into the portal — such as Jake Haener did in 2019, heading to Fresno State and into the waiting arms of Grubb and others.
These quarterbacks no doubt have decisions to make, too.
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