How Washington football can reshape itself in back half of 2026

The first six games of the 2026 season weren't kind to Jedd Fisch and the Washington Huskies , as they sit at 3-3 on the year and 0-3 in Big Ten play following three consecutive losses to Minnesota, USC, and Iowa after a nonconference slate where the team looked shaky, to say the least.

As Fisch looks ahead to the back half of the season, he stated after his team's 41-24 loss to the Hawkeyes on Friday that he wanted to reset where the Huskies are at the halfway point, and expanded on what that should look like.

"We're sitting there; we have two games that we lost by three and four points, and I felt like against SC we were in a place to win the game, and we didn't get it done. Against Minnesota, we started off awfully slow and then played pretty well in the second half, played really well on defense, and had some chances there offensively," Fisch said on Monday.

As Washington's coaching staff tries to figure things out quickly after three straight losses, following an offseason of setting fairly high expectations for the program coming off a 9-4 2025 campaign, Fisch emphasized taking a long look at everything around his program, which has appeared to be in disarray all year.

"What do we need to do? What is the reality of the situation? What do we want to do to make sure that we're getting better? And as we look at each player, how do we get them better?" he added about the messaging to his players. "And as we talk to each player, and the messaging of the team, it was a matter of nobody would've predicted the situation we were in running the football...so where we have to reset is what type of offense do we need to run the next six weeks to put ourselves in a position to score more points?"

"Defensively, how do we get ourselves in a spot where each week we're continuing to get better and not letting a game like that affect the next game? But in terms of messaging, our guys understand we are in this thing together."

Following Friday's loss, the Huskies are sitting at No. 12 in the Big Ten in scoring defense, allowing 22.2 points per game, while the offense ranks No. 16, posting just 26.2 points per game, after finishing No. 4 in scoring offense and No. 5 in scoring defense in 2025.