Q&A: The Daily co-Sports editor says Washington ‘will definitely be tested’ by UCLA

UCLA football (4-0, 1-0 Pac-12) will face off against a fellow undefeated team in No. 15 Washington (4-0, 1-0) on Friday night at the Rose Bowl. Prior to the game, Daily Bruin Sports Editor Sam Settleman and senior staff writer Jon Christon sat down with Ethan Kilbreath, The Daily of the University of Washington’s co-Sports editor, to discuss the Bruins’ matchup with the Huskies.

Daily Bruin: Washington is 4-0, had a big upset over Michigan State a couple of weeks ago. That win right now looks a little bit like UCLA’s win over LSU last year, in that maybe Michigan State isn’t as good as we thought they would be, maybe they’re not the No. 11 team in the country like they were at the time. Do you see this team as a top-15 team right now like the AP poll does, or where do you see this group at right now?

The Daily: I think that 15 is right around where they should be ranked right now. It’s hard to know exactly how good of a win like Michigan State is. But the fact isn’t that they’ve won four games, it’s really that they’ve won convincingly. They haven’t really broken a sweat in any of those four games. And just from the Washington perspective, it’s been night and day from last season. Last year, they only won four games the entire year, so they’ve already matched that total. Last year, they were not moving the ball. It was just frankly painful to watch last year, and so this year, to see the offense just freely moving the ball, really, it seems like at times scoring at will and just having fun. It’s really just been a completely different experience to watch this year. So regardless of how good Michigan State might be or Stanford or anyone else that they’ve played, it’s really been good for Huskies fans to just still see those wins coming in and see the way in which they’ve done it. So there’s definitely a lot of excitement going on for Washington fans.

DB: Speaking of that Michigan State game, watching that and seeing (quarterback) Michael Penix (Jr.) making basically any throw on the field out there. Obviously he transferred from Indiana, but what should UCLA fans be expecting to see out of Penix on Friday?

TD: The thing with Penix is he’s a fifth-year junior, so he has experience, he’s a veteran, he stays composed, he stays collected. He had experience playing, as you said, in the Big Ten at Indiana. And the thing with him is really, if you take a look, it’s never been that he wasn’t good, it’s been that he wasn’t able to stay healthy. He had season-ending injuries in all four of his seasons at Indiana. So he’s definitely playing at a higher level now than he ever was at Indiana. But I’m sure he would tell you that he’s not surprised that he’s playing this well. But really, it’s just his composure and the fact that he knows where to go with the ball, he takes care of it, he’s only thrown one interception this season. So it’s been really good for the Huskies to have good quarterback play this season because, quite frankly, last year, there just wasn’t.

DB: Speaking of new faces to this team, Washington has a new coach this year in Kalen DeBoer, someone who UCLA fans are not too fond of after what he did with Fresno State last year. But he obviously has the experience with Penix at Indiana in the past, albeit briefly, but what else has DeBoer brought to this team that maybe it was missing in the four-win season a season ago?

TD: We don’t really know what was going on last season, to be completely honest. The entire operation was just off last season. That was abundantly clear from the start when they lost to Montana in week one, 13-7. They had a couple guys out, but you should be able to tell Montana with UW’s athletes, you’re running it up the middle every single time, you should still be able to beat Montana. No disrespect to Montana, but the minute that they lost to an FCS team in week one, everyone just knew that it wasn’t going to work out well. So this year, DeBoer has come in, it’s a whole new coaching staff besides the offensive line coach, and they have really good assistant coaches as well. JaMarcus Shephard came from Purdue. He’s a really good wide receiver coach. He’s done great with the talent UW has at wide receiver. Ryan Grubb is right now appearing to be one of the better, if not one of the best, offensive coordinators out there. He had experience with DeBoer also. So it’s a good staff around him, but DeBoer really just knows what he’s doing. He really has good systems in place, and he’s won at every level he’s been at. His career record as a head coach now is, I think, 83-9. So obviously most of that came at Sioux Falls, which is obviously not a Division I program, but still, there’s something to be said for a guy that knows how to win and has won everywhere he’s been. That’s what was an exciting hire with DeBoer at the time, and now that that’s starting to translate at Washington and he still hasn’t lost here, it starts to get really exciting.

DB: Speaking about the Washington offense, the flip side of that is UCLA’s defense, which has been subpar so far this year against bad opponents and hasn’t been good really the last four years total. So what does UCLA, that defense, have to do to slow down this Washington team?

TD: Well, I think what needs to be done that hasn’t been done at all this season, quite literally, is sack Michael Penix Jr. He has not been sacked actually at all this season. And he’s had, for the most part, all day to throw, and he’s letting receivers get open, and he’s finding them. He’s not going to miss a beat from a clean pocket. So I would say UCLA needs to be the first team this season that’s been able to sack Penix. And even if not sacks, they’re going to need to, at least, knock him down a few times and sort of throw him off his rhythm a little bit because if that doesn’t happen, UW has a lot of talent at receiver in order to find those guys and get open.

DB: On the UCLA side, this is a team that’s led by a veteran quarterback in (redshirt senior) Dorian Thompson-Robinson, but it’s also a team that depends on the ground game as well. So where can UCLA exploit this Washington defense?

TD: That’s sort of the thing that’s up in the air with the UW defense because last year, the run defense for the Huskies last year was, … it was abhorrent. It was terrible. That really is what lost them a lot of games. They could not stop the run. It’s definitely been a lot better this year. UCLA has a really good ground game, so we’ll see if the Huskies can keep up with their run defense. And then there’s still a bit of a question mark with the secondary because UW will be without its starting cornerback Mishael Powell, and Jordan Perryman, its other starting cornerback, is questionable. So, if UCLA can maybe find ways to catch UW’s less experienced cornerbacks off guard, then that’s a possibility too because the Huskies’ starting two cornerbacks might very well likely be out of the game.

DB: Last question: Do you have a score prediction for this game?

TD: There’s a lot of Washington fans that are scared about this one because it just kind of has that trap game feeling. UCLA is a good team, undefeated. The Huskies haven’t won at UCLA in, … well they won there in 2018 actually, but before that, they hadn’t won there in a really long time. So it’s definitely going to be a test. I think the Huskies will probably still win it, but I’ll say it’ll be 34-31. I think UCLA’s offense will do fairly well. I think the Huskies will go down for the first time this season. And even if they don’t lose the game, I think that the Huskies will definitely be tested. So I think UW will win, but I think it’ll definitely be a close one, so I’ll go 34-31.