Washington beat Oregon, and you had to hear it to believe it

Husky Stadium hasn't seen many like UW's 36-33 victory on Saturday.

Photo courtesy of UW Football.

SEATTLE — Lacking a more relatable comparison, a friend once likened the sideline experience at Husky Stadium — when the game is close, and the seats are filled — to something like an acid trip. The sound crescendos, reverberates and compounds until it’s everywhere around you, a sensation replicable nowhere but maybe a rock concert. But there, you probably already know the setlist. On a most pressurized Saturday afternoon by Lake Washington, there was no telling whether euphoria or heartbreak might await the sellout crowd on the other side of so many temple-pounding moments.

Whether their hoarse throats and headaches might wind up in legion with this stadium’s most joyous days.

Whether Washington might beat Oregon, again, when it felt like it probably wouldn’t.

You could have attended games here for decades without seeing anything like it. Decades could pass before you see anything like it again. 

That might have been true, anyway, even if Camden Lewis’ 43-yard field goal attempt had not wandered just too far to the right as time expired, and even if No. 7 Washington hadn’t plucked from likely defeat this 36-33 victory over No. 8 Oregon before 71,321 fans, and even if a few thousand of them hadn’t packed the turf in celebration. It was a classic, regardless of outcome. But because Lewis did miss, and because Michael Penix Jr. and Rome Odunze connected for the go-ahead touchdown moments prior, Saturday’s affair also will be remembered among UW’s all-time greatest victories here, on the mantle with those your father told you about as a kid.

A generation of fans might also remember it as the very loudest, even if the visiting Ducks withstood UW’s homefield advantage to lead late, a single fourth-down conversion separating them from administering the Huskies a crushing loss. But Bo Nix’s fourth-and-three incompletion — the last of three failed fourth-down attempts that UO coach Dan Lanning will hear about in perpetuity — provided UW with an opening in the final two minutes, and Penix needed only two passes to put the Huskies back in front.

The first was a 35-yard shot to Ja’Lynn Polk, completed, poetically, in front of safety Evan Williams, whose older brother, Bennett, was a millisecond late on Penix’s 62-yard touchdown to Taj Davis at Autzen last season. 

The second was an 18-yard touchdown to Odunze, who made his second grown-man touchdown catch of the game, over backup cornerback Trikweze Bridges, on a fade that Penix checked into before the snap.

Penix, who threw for 302 yards and four scores, saw one-on-one coverage, gave Odunze “the head nod” to indicate the ball was coming, and looked off the safety before back-shouldering his most important touchdown pass of the season.

“My guy vs. their guy — I’m going to take my guy every time,” Penix said. “Rome shows each and every day why he’s the top receiver in the nation. He knew that I was going to trust him, and I gave him that fade route, and we made it happen. That’s stuff we do all the time in practice. Every game, y’all see it.”

It wound up the game-winning score, and one of a handful of moments that tested the decibel meter UW installed at Husky Stadium just this week. The school considers its 133.6 reading against Nebraska in 1992 to be the stadium record, and posted that figure on the video board several times throughout Saturday’s game, imploring fans to yell louder and set a new mark. They obliged, pushing the needle past 130 — just shy of the 1992 standard, but loud enough that Todd Marinovich might have heard it, somewhere.

The east end zone received much of the noise. Oregon twice failed on fourth-and-three deep in UW territory on that end. The Huskies blew a fourth-and-one at the goal line, too, the play that gave Oregon possession with 6:33 to play and a 33-29 lead. Penix’s decisive throw to Odunze created another frenzy by the water.

The final shouts, though, were reserved for triple-zeroes, this time on the west end in front of the students, many of whom awoke in the dark to wave signs behind ESPN’s College GameDay set this morning. Oregon drove to UW’s 25-yard line with four seconds left, the ball centered perfectly for the Lewis kick that would either extend this game or end it. He struck it well, yet it drifted, drifted, drifted and missed, wide right, by a slim enough margin that in-person attendees needed a moment — and the official’s signal — to confirm what they had seen: no good. Game over. 

Forever memories followed: the students who leapt the bottom rail and stampeded toward jubilation; the players stuck on the field, happy mayhem everywhere they turned; the coaches, including Kalen DeBoer, who could have spent each of Saturday’s remaining hours high-fiving strangers on their way back to the locker room. Courtney Morgan, UW’s director of player personnel, and Chuck Morrell, co-defensive coordinator and playcaller, shared a knowing embrace as Prince’s “Purple Rain” provided the soundtrack for a postgame scene befitting all hype.

“I’m just trying to find the players, because seeing them celebrate, this is what coaching is all about, is trying to have an environment where they can have these type of opportunities and experiences and moments,” DeBoer said. “It’s just super special.”

Penix played much of the fourth quarter through cramps, DeBoer said, and they were severe enough that it affected the tempo of UW’s offense as the quarterback steeled himself for each snap. He gave an emotional postgame interview before a security guard (read: amateur fullback) guided him toward safety.

“Sorry for some of the people that got shoved out of the way,” Penix said afterward.

Family members awaited Penix inside the tunnel, and he stood there, outside the entrance to UW’s locker room, greeting each and every teammate as they, too, retreated from the mob. He hugged offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb. He high-fived Jalen McMillan and former UW star Jermaine Kearse. The young son of Scott Huff, UW’s offensive line coach, threw both of his arms around the quarterback, and later leapt into his father’s arms. Tuli Letuligasenoa saw Penix and yelled: “That’s that man right there!” Fans asked for selfies, and he obliged.

Eventually, Odunze fought through the human mass to find his quarterback in the tunnel, and now Penix had a partner for his impromptu photoshoots, purple-clad revelers still partying on the field outside as the Huskies’ two most popular players stocked the camera rolls of all who asked.

Of Saturday’s atmosphere, Penix, a sixth-year senior with experience in two power conferences, concluded: “This was No. 1.” The typically stoic DeBoer was so amped that he interrupted Penix’s postgame interview with a celebratory yelp: “I haven’t even seen this guy yet! Oh, man!”

Victory required so many clutch plays and appeared so improbable at times in the fourth quarter that it would be silly to crown the Huskies as the Pac-12’s undisputed best. These teams may well meet again, in Las Vegas, and no serious person would take for granted that UW would win such a game. The Huskies are good, and Oregon is good. Yet Washington’s greatest ambitions feel as realistic as ever: a conference championship, a College Football Playoff appearance, a Huskies quarterback in suit and tie in New York City. A catastrophic defeat against either Arizona State or Stanford is all that could prevent UW from an 8-0 record entering its Nov. 4 game against a USC team that just got bludgeoned at Notre Dame.

The Huskies are far from perfect. They tackled poorly on Saturday, and, given an opportunity to build on an 11-point lead in the second half, their offense sputtered. Jalen McMillan appeared to aggravate the injury that kept him out of UW’s last two games. Considering Oregon’s fourth-down failures — and the fact they piled up 541 yards of total offense — you could understand how the Ducks might feel they should have won.

These are the margins that separate winning coaches from criticized coaches, Heisman finalists from very good quarterbacks, and gut-punch losses from legendary afternoons inside a stadium that has stood, in some capacity, for more than a century.

It could stand another 100 years, and they might still be talking about Penix and Odunze, Lanning and his fourth downs, and the kind of sound you can only hear once.

— Christian Caple, On Montlake