Washington's loss to Iowa was pure torture. The offense played poorly. The defense played poorly. The special teams were a mess. The game plans and substitution patterns looked hopeless. The poorly timed penalties resurfaced. The Dawgs even committed terrible turnovers, which they had largely avoided up to this point in the season. Everything that could go wrong went wrong for the Dawgs in Iowa City. It was the worst football game UW has played in years, at least since the Bob Gregory Apple Cup. At the top of the team's organizational chart sits Jedd Fisch, who has to cope with this terrible result. The question is whether this terrible result revealed a fundamental flaw in Fisch's coaching skills.

The Huskies are 4-3, 2-2 in their first taste of Big 10 play. Going into the season, I thought the schedule looked like there were five games the Dawgs should win (Weber St, Eastern Michigan, Washington St, Northwestern and Indiana), four games in which UW would be a clear underdog (Michigan, USC, Penn St. and Oregon) and three games that could go either way (Rutgers, Iowa, UCLA). I thought that if the Dawgs went 5-4 in the clear favorite/underdog games, the final record could depend on how they performed in the swing games, with the final record varying between 5-7 and 8-4. So far the Dawgs are 0-2 in these games, but UCLA looks a lot worse than I expected. The Dawgs also lost a likely win (Apple Cup) and won a likely loss (Michigan), putting them back on par in the overall record. The problem is that it looks like Indiana skipped two categories, from “likely win” to “likely loss.” Applying what we now know about Indiana to the preseason calculation would shift the expected record to a range of 4-7 wins. Since the Huskies already have two losses in three toss-up games, they must get a win against a higher-ranked team (USC, Penn St, Oregon, Indiana) and beat UCLA to achieve bowl eligibility. Fortunately, USC has probably played its way into toss-up territory, so six wins is certainly possible.

When examining why the balance sheet looks worse than we had hoped, the Apple Cup loss is of great importance. In both that game and the loss to Rutgers, Husky teams dominated much of the action but failed to convert yards into points, made bad special teams errors and committed terribly timed penalties. Washington had a postgame win expectation of 78% in the Apple Cup and 72% against Rutgers. After every game, every fan could see the blueprint for a more successful team – just cut out the stupid plays and the core of a very good team lies underneath.

The Iowa game was something different. The Dawgs were crushed (4% post-game win expectation). Even if the Dawgs were 6-1 or even 5-2 and suffered a tough loss to a physically dominant Iowa team, it would probably feel more like the years when Chris Petersen's teams just couldn't compete well Stanford as an existential problem.

The comparison with Petersen can be instructive. I've heard fans say that the early Fish era reminded them of Steve Sarkisian's tenure. Aside from the Jimmy Lake Vortex, Sark's start was the last time UW had a fairly inexperienced head coach. Of course, Sark came to UW with no head coaching experience, but Fisch only had 16 wins in his career as a full-time head coach and only last year's 10-3 winning season. Still, in Petersen's first year, the Huskies lost two straight games to Oregon and Arizona State in October and were just 5-3. This team didn't have a win as good as Fisch's win over Michigan, but with 92 wins and two Fiesta Bowls on his resume, no one questioned whether Petersen was cut out for this whole football coaching thing. The Huskies gave Petersen time to develop and build the roster, and by the third year the team was in the CFP.

Squad development is another key factor for Fisch. As we all know, the Huskies got almost no production from last year's team. At the start of the year, Washington ranked 126th^Th upon return of production according to Bill Connelly's ratings and second to last among the P4 teams. Among the other teams ranked at the bottom was Michigan (130th).^Th) was extremely disappointing. Mississippi St, Maryland and North Carolina, all outside the top 100, are a combined 0-9 in conference play. Tennessee is the only P4 team outside the top 100 that has had much success, and its roster has been bolstered by the 6^Th Best transfer class according to average rating. I think we all understood intellectually how difficult it would be to win with a brand new squad that has never played together, but the emotional experience of watching this lack of cohesion is still jarring.

Despite the personnel challenges, the performance on the field still had many good elements. According to College Football Insiders, the Huskies are ranked 13th^Th in the country in expected net points added. The offense and defense are 17 each^Th Best in the country, supported by a very effective pass offense and pass defense. If you've read this far, I don't have to tell you that the stats don't tell the whole story. The Dawgs struggled in the red zone and failed to cap off these impressive drives with touchdowns. Penalties on both sides of the ball have turned wins into losses. The special teams play was atrocious, from Grady Gross' kick yips to wobbly punts to near non-existent kick coverage (if I were to call for drastic changes, it would be replacing Jordan Paopao as ST coordinator. That's him great TE coach and recruiter, but he needs to own up to these ST failures). These are areas where Fisch needs to improve, but the fundamentals of a good offense and defense are already evident, even with so much roster turnover.

While Fisch still needs to refine his playmaking and substitution patterns in the red zone, the Huskies need to acquire and develop top talent to close the gap on the teams ahead of them. Late in the summer, Dawg fans raved about the great job Fisch and his staff did in recruiting. The class remains No. 19 nationally and sixth in the Big 10. Perhaps the good vibes at the start of the cycle have faded due to so much good recruiting work being done, but the recruiting work the staff has done so far has exceeded my expectations. As Fisch said, the current college football climate rewards schools and clubs that spend big on recruiting and transfers. It remains to be seen whether UW can compete in this area with the likes of Ohio State, Tennessee and, yes, Oregon. This has nothing to do with Fisch or his staff's ability to recruit players and everything to do with donors' willingness to view Husky football as a vanity project.

Many of you are probably familiar with Betteridge's Law, which states that “any heading that ends with a question mark can be answered with 'No.'” In my opinion, Betteridge's Law applies here. Yes, there are clear areas of improvement for Jedd Fisch, from the way he talks about his own mistakes to the way he and his staff coach special teams. On the other hand, he faced an incredibly difficult task and the results were at least passable. Given positive signs on the recruiting trail and his own success in the transfer portal within a limited period of time, I still see plenty of reasons for optimism as long as Fisch remains UW head coach. No, he didn't do anything in his first few months to make him a great coach. There are still plenty of speed bumps that could get in his way. But I don't see any reason to be more pessimistic than in January.