Washington EDGE Maurice Heims will return to Washington for 2024 season

On Monday, Washington EDGE Maurice Heims announced he will return to the program for the 2024 campaign. Washington has seen a mass exodus of players after head coach Kalen DeBoer left to become Nick Saban’s successor at Alabama.

Heims played in 14 of Washington’s 15 games this past season. He tallied six total tackles this year. Heims will stay at Washington to play under newly-hired head coach Jedd Fisch, who previously was the head coach at Arizona.

Heims announced his decision in a post to X.

Let’s do this thing. BOW DOWN! pic.twitter.com/m5zFkktRQq

— Maurice Heims (@Maurice_hms) January 22, 2024

Not every Husky decided to stick around for the new era in Washington. Since DeBoer announced his decision to take the reins in Tuscaloosa, seven Washington players have entered the transfer portal.

Nonetheless, the team hasn’t only suffered losses. In fact, Fisch has already added three former Arizona players through the portal. While Fisch would love to keep as much talent as he can in his new program, he isn’t surprised to see players go.

Washington HC Jedd Fisch weighs in on roster turnover

After being named Washington’s head coach, Fisch discussed the complex issue.

“It’s certainly an interesting situation here because I believe right now there’s 17 players in the portal from this roster,” Fisch said. “There’s nine players or 10 players that have declared for the NFL Draft, you probably have the most amount of players that are gonna get drafted in the NFL will probably come from the University of Washington, this year’s draft. So we know it’s gonna be a completely different team in 2024 than what the community saw in 2023.”

It’ll be difficult for Fisch to repeat DeBoer’s success. This past season, DeBoer led the Huskies to its second-ever College Football Playoff appearance and first appearance in the national championship. Fisch is ready for the challenges ahead.

“What we have to do is, we don’t just recruit for one year, we recruit for the eternity of college football,” Fisch said. “We’re gonna recruit for a program that we’re gonna go out here tomorrow or the next day and we’re gonna build a ’25 class to try to make it the best possible recruiting class it can possibly be.

“Then, if there’re other available players that are in the portal, then we’re gonna look at those, as well. But what it comes down to is we want to maniacally recruit daily for as long as we are here, and we are gonna recruit the ’25 class, the ’26 class, the 27′ class, the 28′ class and continue to try to build a roster that we can all be very proud of.”