Michigan Will Find Trice Twice The Edge Rusher He Was in 2021

Heading into Monday's national championship game against Michigan in this Texas town, Trice is in a very good place. He's a two-time, first-team All-Pac-12 pick, a third-team Associated Press All-America choice. Twice against Texas, he's been selected as the defensive player of the game, both in the 2022 Alamo Bowl and last Monday's Sugar Bowl.

The 2021 game against the Wolverines, just Trice's second outing as a college football player, seems so distant and so unlike what's happening now for his 14-0 team riding a 21-game win streak.

"Yeah, that was a while back, completely different team, different group of guys," Trice said. "But now we have a whole different team, whole different coaching staff, and we have a way better team, way better thing going out here. You guys see that. The level of preparation and the mindset that this team has is a lot different than that in the past. 

"It's a different time, it's a different era, and this is a team of winners, and we're out here to win and go out in this last game and go do what we can to get that W."

After drawing his handful of minutes against Michigan in 2021, Trice scooped up a fumble against Arkansas State on the very next weekend at Husky Stadium and rumbled 72 yards for a touchdown. 

Still, he continued to come off the bench and play limited snaps for a team that began to list like a ship taking on water. He picked up a pair of sacks against Arizona State and he did this as a reserve.

It wasn't until Lake was fired, the great ZTF returned and went back out with a season-ending concussion and McDonald took a seat that the Huskies' interim coaching staff made Trice a starter against Colorado and Washington State to close out the season.

Once Kalen DeBoer's staff arrived in 2022, Trice firmly established himself as a UW headliner. ZTF played behind him that season and now they play together and it's a combination that creates havoc.

"This is the most unselfish team I've been a part of my entire career in football," he said. "It's a big part of why we're at where we're at and we can finish off games and situations like that, because you see teams that can't perform in clutch moments like that. They hang their heads down and they start to get mad at each other and they start fighting within their groups and within their units, and that's really what tears teams apart and not let them be successful in moments like that."

With a perfect blend of desire and power for an edge rusher, Trice comes off a performance against Texas in which he got into the backfielde and piled up with 3 tackles for loss, which included a pair of sacks, and he forced a fumble.

Husky quarterback Michael Penix Jr., notably overlooked for the Heisman Trophy and most postseason All-America teams, had his coming-out party in the Huskies' 37-31 win over the Longhorns where everyone's now a big believer in what he can do.

Trice still hasn't totally arrived. Following the CFP semifinal games, ESPN released its top 100 players of the college football season and the Husky edge rusher wasn't on the list. He might have been the biggest omission. Texas quarterback Quinn Ewers, a player he sacked twice on Monday night, was included, as were others he manhandled, but not Trice. 

He's a player who often does a silent burn. Yet entering the Texas game, he expressed his public disdain over people looking down at his team, making it a continuous underdog, including against those once-beaten Longhorns. Unusual for him, he blurted out how he wanted to put a beatdown on them.

When Trice was asked following the game about that expressive moment for him, DeBoer heard this and laughed because he knew his player normally internalizes things.

"Obviously, yeah, I feel better about that," Trice said. "Yeah, I just think we prove everybody wrong time and time again. And we'll continue to do that. And this is what we do as Dawgs, at U-Dub up in Seattle. We're bred for this. We prepare for this. And you can overlook us all you want, but we go out there and we prove everybody wrong every time."

Michigan should be advised that it won't get off easy this time, that Trice will be in the starting lineup, on the football field much of the game, looking to do a lot of damage on Monday.