Washington football: Huskies battle for win over Arizona State

It certainly wasn’t easy, but some great defense and the best game of the season from Jake Browning helped Washington football move to 3-1 on the year.

It wasn’t pretty, and it certainly wasn’t easy, but after a hard-fought game, Washington grabbed their second Pac-12 win of the season. After a close win over Utah last week, Washington returned home facing an even tougher challenge, as Herm Edwards and his Sun Devils came to town.

Washington was more than up to the task though. Thanks to some excellent defense that was able to nearly shut down the Arizona State passing attack, and a surprisingly good performance by Jake Browning against a good defense, the Huskies came out on top, 27-20.

While the end result was good news for Washington, there was a time in this game where things looked very concerning. Arizona State’s offense looked nearly unstoppable in the first quarter, picking up ten points and moving with relatively. Washington’s offense was able to keep up though, taking the lead late in the first quarter on a beautiful pass from Browning.

The Huskies would never look back, extending that lead with a second quarter field goal before slowing down a bit, taking a 17-10 lead into the half. Arizona State struck first in the second half, but a third quarter field goal from Washington and an early fourth quarter touchdown, paired with lockdown defense were enough to essentially ice the game. Arizona State put up a fight late, but it wasn’t enough to stage a comeback.

While this was a good win for Washington, I think it’s fair to say that Arizona State proved a lot last night too. They didn’t come out on top, but they went blow for blow with a top ten team pretty much all game long. The offense has a long way to go, and I don’t think Arizona State is anything more than an eight-win team, but in the Pac-12 South, that may be enough to make them serious contenders. For a first-year head coach, that’s pretty good.