Apple Cup opens a season for the first time
Washington hands out its 2026 captain patches and opens fall camp with Demond Williams back at quarterback, ten days out from hosting Washington State in a rivalry game moved to Week 1 for the first time ever.
Fisch calls day one study hall, then the team names its captains
Washington opened fall camp on the east practice field behind Husky Stadium with no pads and no scrimmage periods — NCAA acclimation rules for a hot, slightly smoky first day. Jedd Fisch framed it plainly for reporters: "I look at this, truly, like study hall," he said, per the Spokesman-Review, with the next two days reserved for fundamentals before the staff starts installing game plans in full pads. The Huskies' account followed a day later with the season's captains list, the kind of program marker that means more on Montlake than another countdown graphic.
The 2026 University of Washington Football Team Captains. t.co/20hyyz4zwm
The quarterback room is settled around Demond Williams Jr., who returns after a 2025 season that had him posting the 10th-best passer rating in the country at 161.0 — a number that dropped hard, to 107.8, in the losses where defenses keyed on taking away his legs. Cleaning that up is the actual camp story here, more than any depth chart battle. Washington also has to replace both Jonah Coleman and Adam Mohammad in the backfield, which is why a name like true freshman Ansu Sanoe is already showing up on the team's own feed as camp winds toward September.
Last season ended on a 38-10 bowl blowout of Boise State
Washington's 2025 season had real swings in it. The Huskies lost a three-point road game at Wisconsin in November, then blew out Purdue 49-13 at home a week later and ran through UCLA 48-14 in Los Angeles, before Oregon shut them down 26-14 to close the regular slate. They finished last season the way you'd want to, though: a 38-10 throttling of Boise State on December 14 that sent the roster into the offseason on a good note.
None of that carries into 2026 as form — the Huskies are 0-0 and there's no run to point to yet — but it's the tape the returning core built their identity on, and it's why last year's late surge against Purdue and UCLA is the version of this offense fans expect Fisch and Williams to pick back up with.
Two names to watch on the injury report before kickoff
Covers' aggregated injury table has two Huskies worth tracking heading into the opener. Running back J. Washington is listed doubtful with a neck injury as of last week and looks unlikely to be available against Washington State, though that's a hedge from an unbylined report, not a team announcement. Receiver D. Roebuck is questionable for personal reasons, reported the week before that — worth noting, not worth treating as settled either way.
Between that and the backfield turnover from losing Coleman and Mohammad, running back is quietly the position to watch on Montlake this week, whatever the practice-field optimism around Sanoe.
The 118th Apple Cup, played for the first time as a season opener
Washington and Washington State meet on September 6 vs. Washington State, and for the first time in the series' history, the Apple Cup is the season opener rather than the finale — a scheduling shift both programs' beat writers flagged this offseason now that the two schools sit in different conferences. Washington State is a different team than the one that showed up in Pullman last year: Jimmy Rogers left for Iowa State after one season and took a chunk of the roster with him, and new coach Kirby Moore has spent camp trying to hold together what's left, including several players Rogers originally recruited out of South Dakota State. The Cougars are 0-0 with no games played this season; their most recent result on record is a 34-21 win at Utah last season.
Washington opened as a 22.5-point favorite, and the total opened at 50.5 — a number that reads as middling for a rivalry game with this much uncertainty on the visiting sideline. A 22-and-a-half-point spread against a rebuilding Cougars team says the market has already made up its mind about year one under Moore; whether Demond Williams and a retooled Husky backfield make that number look conservative is the first real thing we'll learn about this season.