Jedd Fisch breaks down challenges in Year 1 at Washington

There’s been plenty of change in college football this season, but few teams will undergo quite as much change as Washington as it gets used to life under new coach Jedd Fisch.

The Huskies will reportedly have 46 new scholarship players, as well as 21 of 22 new starters.

“I would say the biggest challenge, of course, is you’re taking over a program where coach (Kalen) DeBoer did such a fantastic job in a short period of time with a veteran team,” Jedd Fisch said. “Those guys were old. You had 13 of those guys playing in the NFL right now. So we had to build the culture with a bunch of guys that have never really started or played in games together that were very meaningful.”

That’s never an easy task, particularly when you’re about to embark on a transition to a new, more difficult conference. Such is the case for Washington as it heads to the Big Ten.

The Huskies will still have lofty expectations, of course. You don’t go from the national championship game to suddenly being OK with only a bowl win, for example.

“We had to teach them what we would expect on a daily basis,” Jedd Fisch said. “And they’ve embraced it. They’ve worked extremely hard together. They’ve found a way to really open up their arms and embrace all the different type of players we brought in from all the different communities.”

The Huskies will have the luxury of a coach who has already proven he can engineer a tough turnaround. They’ll also have some of his hand-picked players from his last stop at Arizona.

That should, in theory, provide a nucleus of players to build around.

Of course, that only holds true if the players get along and mesh well together, something that is rarely a guarantee in college football. But Fisch thinks it’s worked well so far.

“Our culture is that,” Jedd Fisch said. “It’s a culture of belonging, it’s a culture of inclusiveness and it’s a culture of wanting to make sure that if we act and behave in a certain manner that we understand we can have a lot of fun competing.”