In bowl-clinching win over UCLA, Washington's future is present

Can the Huskies keep Demond Williams Jr. off the field in their final two games?

SEATTLE — The retired defensive tackle and the former Washington edge rusher walked together onto the field, smiling as the final seconds ticked away. The last time Faatui Tuitele and Zion Tupuola-Fetui pulled on shoulder pads at Husky Stadium — their final college home game, last November — they battled their in-state rivals to a last-second victory that clinched the school’s first unbeaten regular season in 32 years.

On Friday, they watched something different. The program today little resembles what Tuitele, now a recruiting assistant, and ZTF, visiting as a guest, remember from last year’s charmed journey. Washington is far from any discussion of which teams might make the College Football Playoff. The Huskies will not be represented at the Heisman Trophy ceremony. Booger McFarland won’t even bother calling them soft.

Yet the two former players still bore witness, along with an announced crowd of 68,881, to something worth celebrating: the Huskies will at least finish Jedd Fisch’s first season in a bowl game, accomplishment enough for a program navigating a new conference after losing nearly every major contributor from one of its greatest teams ever.

These Huskies have at least something in common with that group, too, in that they didn’t lose a game at home, Friday’s 31-19 triumph over UCLA bumping to 20 the Huskies’ streak of consecutive victories at Husky Stadium. That, at least, was a fitting coda for those like Alphonzo Tuputala and Carson Bruener and Kam Fabiculanan and Drew Fowler, seniors who peeped the mountaintop and absorbed bruises on the way back down but will leave college with only distant memories of what it’s like to lose on Montlake Boulevard.