What will Michael Penix Jr. do for a finale?

Washington's superstar quarterback has one game left. Win or lose, he's elevated UW in ways few could have expected.

Michael Penix Jr. answers questions at Saturday’s media day for the College Football Playoff national championship. (Photo by Christian Caple/On Montlake)

HOUSTON — It’s just for fun, Michael Penix Jr. says, and “never serious,” but he has nevertheless developed a reputation with his Washington teammates as a gifted freestyle rapper.

Somewhat famously, ABC cameras captured Penix freestyling with receiver Jalen McMillan late in the fourth quarter of UW’s Oct. 14 victory over Oregon, apparently rapping specifically about how the Huskies were going to come back and win the game (which, you’ll recall, they did).

This is a common occurrence.

“Mike’s known for his rapping in the locker room,” senior tight end Jack Westover said. “It’ll be pretty early in the morning, and you’ll walk in and hear — ‘oh, there’s Mike.’”

“He doesn’t have to read off a sheet of paper,” said junior linebacker Alphonzo Tuputala, whose locker is near Penix’s. “He can go for two minutes long, just straight bars.”

“He should be a rapper,” McMillan said, laughing. “He’s nice.”

So it is not only on the football field that Penix makes difficult tasks appear simple.

That Washington is playing for a national championship against No. 1 Michigan on Monday, two seasons removed from finishing 4-8 and firing coach Jimmy Lake, is the culmination of several decisions and acquisitions made throughout the past 25 months. First, UW needed to hire Kalen DeBoer. Then DeBoer needed to assemble his assistant staff, and convince several key players to stay at Washington rather than transfer, and plug holes on the roster with experienced transfers.

The Huskies’ 2023 season has required so many thrilling finishes and close victories that it would be silly to ascribe their success to any one player. Where would they be, after all, without Rome Odunze’s fourth-and-one run in the Apple Cup, or Mishael Powell’s pick-six against Arizona State, or Elijah Jackson’s swat against Texas?

Yet it’s hard to shake the feeling that all of this flows from Penix, the former Indiana transfer who set UW’s single-season passing record in 2022, chose to return for a run at a title, wound up the Heisman Trophy runner-up and now has the Huskies on the precipice of their first outright national championship. 

Perhaps more so than any individual player in modern UW history, Penix has effectively become the program’s center of gravity. His decision to return in 2023 prompted a chain reaction of similar decisions by star teammates. It helped the Huskies recruit other players from the transfer portal. As Washington hopes to enhance its brand as a program and university by moving to the Big Ten, Penix has given them a bonafide superstar at the most important position in sports. No longer the talented but oft-injured player that he became at Indiana, Penix instead has achieved legendary status at his new school, re-casting his own legacy while helping lead Washington to (nearly) unprecedented heights.

“I feel like everything I've been through shaped me into the man and the player, the person I am today,” Penix said Saturday. “I'm super blessed for it all. I wouldn't change it for anything.”

You will watch him for the final time in a Washington uniform on Monday night. If Penix already has established as an all-time UW great, the quarterback could make a case for the No. 1 spot if he helps deliver an unbeaten, undisputed national title.

His teammates — on offense and defense — saw Penix’s elite traits early. Practicing against him, senior safety Dominique Hampton, meant “seeing him being able to deliver the ball in windows that I haven’t seen a ball get delivered to before. I was like, OK, this is going to cause a lot of issues.”

Star cornerback Jabbar Muhammad, who transferred from Oklahoma State, said he chose Washington because of how much talent it returned on both sides of the ball — including Penix, of course — and that during spring practices, “I (saw) Mike throw the ball, like, bro. OK, we’re going to be pretty special.”

Penix’s deft touch and arm strength made him the perfect candidate to helm DeBoer and coordinator Ryan Grubb’s QB-friendly offensive scheme — and to pair with UW’s talented wideouts — but he’s meant so much more than that to the Huskies. Understated but authoritative, Penix also has grown into the kind of leader UW needed at quarterback, and his teammates say his growing fame hasn’t changed him.

“He’s the same guy every day,” right tackle Roger Rosengarten said. “What you guys don’t see at practice, the walk-throughs — we have so many walk-throughs. Same guy. So composed. Something doesn’t go right, we miss a block, we miss a route or something, same guy. It’s next-play mentality for Mike.”

Penix has brought his family along for the ride. His parents didn’t make it to every game — one younger brother, Mekhi, plays receiver at Tennessee Tech, and the youngest, Mishon, plays youth football in their hometown of Tampa Bay, so it’s a bit of a juggling act — but they were able to attend more than they did last season. And they were there for the highlights, watching Penix throw the game-winning touchdown pass against Oregon in Seattle, then win MVP honors in both the Pac-12 championship game and Sugar Bowl.

And, of course, both Michael Sr. and Takisha attended the Heisman Trophy ceremony, along with several other family members. Penix’s parents even sat for a live interview on the ESPN telecast. That experience, Takisha said, was “nerve-wracking up until the moment, and then once they said ‘live,’ it was just like, ‘OK, can’t be nervous anymore. Millions of people probably watching.’”

It’s one of the things Odunze appreciates most about Penix; he embraced UW so thoroughly that his family feels at home there, too.

“When the family comes by, they know all our names, and they say what’s up, and they’re embracing us whenever we see them,” Odunze said. “That’s all of them. I think that family aspect and togetherness that his family has, he’s brought that to the entire team.”

As Westover said: “It doesn’t matter if you’re a freshman walk-on or a senior starter, I know he treats everyone like they’re his brother.”

Penix’s record-setting 2022 season made him a Heisman candidate, and his return to UW presented ample opportunity to burnish his income via name, image and likeness (NIL) opportunities. Just this season, Penix has partnered with brands like Beats by Dre, Alaska Airlines and Amazon. Adidas signed both Penix and Odunze as its first two college football athletes. Penix shares the wealth, too; he gifted headphones to the entire team, and gave UW’s offensive linemen round-trip flight vouchers.

His profile is such that, left tackle Troy Fautanu said, Penix sometimes wears a ski mask when they go out to eat. Fautanu recalled one time when he forgot it, and “people were just coming up to him. It was crazy.”

It’s a gratifying thing for his family to witness, considering what it took to get here.

“When we’re walking with him, just seeing kids walk up to him or grown-ups walk up to him, the great words that they have to say,” Takisha said. “It’s really good to see that for him, and to see that he’s very level-headed and humble.”

When Penix chose to transfer to Washington, most UW fans likely knew him for his tough-luck history at Indiana — four seasons, four season-ending injuries, including two ACL tears. In an interview earlier this season with the Pac-12 Networks, Penix said that on game days, when he was hurt and feeling particularly low, he would wait for his roommate to leave, then “lie on the floor and I’d just cry to God, just praying that He’d protect me that day.”

Yet even some of Penix’s own teammates weren’t aware of his struggles until he stood and gave his testimony at a Friday night chapel service before last season’s Apple Cup. “That was the first time I ever heard it,” Fautanu said. DeBoer, who coached Penix as offensive coordinator at Indiana in 2019, said “there’s been a story or two that I learned after he’s been here” about how difficult those injuries were to navigate.

At Washington, Takisha said, her oldest son found the fresh start he was looking for.

“It’s genuine,” she said. “I really love and appreciate that. We knew DeBoer and Coach (Nick) Sheridan. We knew some of the coaches from Indiana. But I think the coaching staff has done a really great job of bringing such a great culture into that locker room. I think it starts there. The whole team will do what it takes to accomplish their goals.

“I wouldn’t say he called home raving or anything about what’s going on. But you could just feel it. We’ve been around sports for so long. You can just feel it. And when we visit, talking to some of the other players, and getting to meet the coaches — I call it a vibe.”

The night before UW’s Sugar Bowl victory over Texas — New Year’s Eve in New Orleans — Penix called a meeting to remind his teammates of what awaited the next day, to encourage them to focus and avoid unnecessary distractions. Other leaders spoke, too. “That’s what this team is about,” said senior tight end Devin Culp. “We’re about taking accountability for each other, and making sure we’re all in the right place and on the same wavelength.”

It didn’t take long for Penix to achieve that alignment with the coaching staff, either. He obviously knew DeBoer, but hadn’t worked with Grubb before. DeBoer told Penix: “You’re going to love Coach Grubb. Just trust him.”

“When I first met him, I knew I was going to like him because of his energy and the way he talked to me,” Penix said. “I could just tell that he was all about football. He was all in.”

It helped that Grubb was already familiar with Penix’s abilities, having traded so much film with DeBoer while DeBoer was at Indiana and Grubb was offensive coordinator under Jeff Tedford at Fresno State in 2019.

Grubb calls Penix “my hero” for how he’s navigated his newfound fame. And how he processes information before plotting a course of action.

“I think quietly, he observes, and he’s so good at listening,” Grubb said. “If you don’t know Mike, you can think initially (that) he’s withdrawn. When really, he’s just listening. He’s paying attention. He’s reading what’s going on in the situation, and I think he does a good job being slow to react, instead of reactionary.”

It’s part of why Grubb is so receptive when Penix makes suggestions in meetings.

“When Mike comes with something that maybe he’s not comfortable with,” said backup quarterback Dylan Morris, “Coach Grubb is instantaneously changing it.”

His 430 yards and two touchdowns against Texas made Penix the offensive MVP of the Sugar Bowl. The performance, complete with signature tight-window throws and accurate deep shots, could go down as the best ever by a UW quarterback.

UW is hoping its superstar has one more like it left in him. And maybe a few new verses, too.

“That also just says how calm he is,” Morris said, referencing the Oregon clip. “That, you could say, might have been the biggest moment of our season right there, and he’s freestyling. Then he goes out in two plays and gets a touchdown. It’s pretty incredible.”

— Christian Caple, On Montlake