What makes Michael Penix Jr., Huskies special for the national-title game? Leadership
It was New Year’s Eve in New Orleans.
Those are perhaps the least likely hours in any year — in one of the least likely cities in the country — to get 18-to-22-year-old guys to ignore the festivities and stick to working.
Yet that’s exactly when Michael Penix Jr. led his Washington Huskies. Again.
The quarterback who is much more valuable to UW football than just his wondrous throwing arm called a players-only team meeting at the Huskies’ downtown hotel near Bourbon Street. They’d been there since the day after Christmas.
It was early evening on New Year’s Eve.
“Six fifty-five p.m.,” All-American wide receiver Rome Odunze said, to be exact.
“He called it right before we had a team meeting. It was a players-only meeting. He wanted to talk to us.”
Huskies standout linebacker Edefuan Ulofoshio was surprised.
“It caught me off guard,” UW co-captain said. “I was like, I didn’t know he could call a team meeting without me (knowing).”
Kalen DeBoer didn’t know, either. Into Tuesday, the coach still didn’t know what his quarterback told the team.
He does now.
What was Penix’s game-eve message from his 15-minute talk that was still resonating with every Husky on the flight back to Seattle Tuesday following UW’s 37-31 victory over Texas in a pulsating, unforgettable national semifinal at the Sugar Bowl Monday night?
Stay focused. We are here to win a national championship.
“We’ve been working for this our whole lives,” Penix told his teammates, according to what the Huskies told The News Tribune inside UW’s off-the-hook locker room at the Superdome early Tuesday.
“He brought us in and said, ‘It’s time to go,’” Odunze said. “New Orleans. New Year’s. There were a lot of distractions that’s been going on, and he just wanted to make sure that everybody was locked in.
“And we heard him.”
Now the Huskies will play for their third national championship and first since 1991, against Michigan in the college football title game in Houston Monday night.
“That just shows his leadership, his courage,” Odunze said of Penix, the sixth-year senior who’s bulled through four season-ending injuries, four surgeries, two reconstructed knees and more.
Ulofoshio said Penix’s meeting “was just about locking in.”
“He talked about what it took: ‘Lock in. Don’t let the outside noise, all that other, extra stuff, get to you.’”
Best player, best leader
DeBoer raves about Penix’s leadership as much or more than the throwing from the man his coach calls the best player in college football.
In this sport, the best players aren’t always the best leaders. And the best leaders sometimes aren’t the best players.
Penix is both for Washington.
“This guy really all month was on another level as far as his mission to make sure that this happened,” DeBoer said outside the locker room about 45 minutes after UW’s Sugar Bowl win. “And I think you saw it all week in practice. There was just nothing he was going to let slide by where we would leave a doubt that we were going to find a way to win.”
Or, as Odunze said of Penix: “He’s THAT guy.”
Leadership propels Huskies
National television viewers and media members who watched the Sugar Bowl saw how exquisite Penix is as a player.
Judging by the Heisman Trophy voting last month, many must have been watching him for the first time.
Penix’s 430 yards passing against one of the nation’s best defenses in Texas, on 29 completions in 38 attempts with two touchdowns, were the second-most yards passing in College Football Playoff semifinals history.
It was telling, borderline comical, how many of those national reporters remarked inside the Superdome Monday night while watching him play: “Man, that Michael Penix is GOOD.”
It explains how Penix, the best of these 14-0, title-game Huskies, didn’t win the Heisman Trophy last month. It went to Jayden Daniels of 9-3 LSU from the all-encompassing Southeastern Conference. While Penix and his Huskies were preparing to play in the College Football Playoffs Monday afternoon, Daniels was skipping something called the ReliaQuest Bowl his LSU team was playing in.
Yet here’s the thing: What makes Penix so special is what you don’t see.
“Certainly, as a leader of this football team, those guys respond,” DeBoer said. “And you saw that (Monday, and Sunday, night).
“Those guys play with passion. And it starts with No. 9 right here.”
It’s not just Penix
What makes these Huskies extraordinary, perfect at 14-0 and playing for the national championship: It’s not just Penix who leads.
This Washington team is blessed with many players who take charge in a positive way. Their messages, differing in delivery but consistent in direction, feed into 105 players plus coaches, trainers and staffers believing they will win. Every time.
So far, from August through September, October, November, December and now into a new year, they have won.
Every time.
As Penix finished speaking in that players-only meeting the night before the Sugar Bowl, Ulofoshio stood up next.
“At this point, hey, you’ve got to understand that you’re a legend,” Ulofoshio told his teammates Sunday night. “Everybody doesn’t know how good you are, how talented you are. But WE know how good you are. We talked about this. We’ve worked on it.
“All we’ve got to do is show exactly what we’ve been working on to get here.”
Monday night, at the end of pregame warmups about 30 minutes before kickoff, wide receiver and native Texan Ja’Lynn Polk called all Huskies around him in the Superdome’s north end zone. A sophomore transfer, Polk signed a scholarship with Texas Tech out of high school in Lufkin — because Texas didn’t offer him one.
Standing in the middle of the WASHINGTON painted in purple trimmed in gold, Polk gave a fiery talk to his teammates. He was shouting. His white wrap over his left arm was visible eight levels above the field as Polk punctuated his message with points and hammering-like gestures.
“Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. He’s a Texas boy, so it was his time to give us some inspiration,” Odunze said.
“That’s exactly what he did.”
After Polk lit them up, the Huskies charged off the field and into the locker room for final game preparations like bulls running in Pamplona.
Texas’ Longhorns didn’t know what hit them. Polk was why UW took a 7-0 lead on its first offensive possession.
Like Penix, Polk did far more than just talk at the Sugar Bowl.
He balled out.
On the Huskies’ fifth snap of the game Polk outran his defender across the field. He caught another of Penix’s beautiful deep passes then ran past two Longhorns for 77-yard gain, from the Washington 21-yard line to the Texas 2. That set up teammate Dillon Johnson’s short touchdown run and a quick 7-0 lead for UW.
Late in the second quarter Polk beat a Texas defender on a deep post route from the right slot. Penix deftly avoided Texas pass rushers, as he did all night. When Penix’s pass arrived to him at the 5-yard line Polk tapped it into the air above the defensive back, who then fell down. Polk casually collected his own tip and breezed across the goal line to put Washington ahead 21-14.
Odunze has been rolling up 87 catches, 1,553 yards and 13 touchdowns this season. UW offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb has been trying to get wide receiver Jalen McMillan back into the flow after his knee injury in September. That had Polk less productive in the Huskies’ offense in November.
No more. In Washington’s last two games, the Huskies’ biggest, Polk has starred. He had five catches for 57 yards and key plays to keep drives alive last month in UW’s win over Oregon in the Pac-12 title game in Las Vegas.
Monday night, Polk had 122 yards on another five catches with his ninth touchdown of the season.
“He plays with that chip, that fieriness. We love him for it,” Odunze said of Polk. “He’s really the vocal leader in that room, and he continues to support all of us, and be vocal about his experiences and how he wants our attitude going into the game is to be violent, aggressive and to go take the ball.
“He inspires us to go do the things that we do.”
What UW’s receivers did Monday night was catch 19 of the 20 passes Penix threw their way. Odunze, Polk, McMillan and Germie Bernard had 19 receptions for 353 yards and two touchdowns as Washington took a 34-21 lead in the fourth quarter then held on.
At the Pac-12 championship game in Las Vegas, Penix gathered the entire team around him during the long media timeout between the third and fourth quarters. UW was behind Oregon for the first time. The Huskies’ perfect season was in peril.
After Penix’s impassioned talk the Dawgs scored the next two touchdowns of the game and advanced to this College Football Playoff.
Monday night in the Sugar Bowl, it was Ulofoshio in the middle of every Huskies player, trainer and coach inspiring and leading them — into the national title game.
The leading, the believing, it never stops with these Huskies.
“That’s the thing about us, I feel like each and every player on this team, we fell in love with the process,” Penix said. “And I’ve said it since, I think it was around fall camp, that our goal was to win the national championship. And some people probably didn’t believe us.
“So we’re not going to get distracted and forget about that goal...We’re still motivated. We still got more things we want to accomplish.
“And the natty is right here infront of us.”
This story was originally published January 2, 2024 at 7:40 PM with the headline "What makes Michael Penix Jr., Huskies special for the national-title game? Leadership."
