Washington football feeling optimistic about status of injured RB

The Washington Huskies saw their top two running backs, second-year Quaid Carr and fourth-year Jayden Limar, both suffer significant injuries in the Apple Cup, dealing a significant blow to Jedd Fisch's backfield

However, during his Thursday press conference, Fisch delivered some good news about the injury-ravaged position, as third-year running back Jordan Washington continues to recover from a neck injury that he suffered during spring practice, stating that there's a chance the former four-star recruit returns this season.

"I am more optimistic (that Washington can play in 2026) based upon how his rehab has gone," Fisch said on Thursday.

"He's gotten a lot stronger; he's stronger than he was before he got hurt, with all of his weight room metrics...His speed is the same; the thing that we have to look at is cleared for contact. That decision gets made by the surgeon who took care of him, and then we have to look at conditioning. But in terms of how things are trending, he's doing exceptionally well, but we don't know anything until he gets scanned, and the scans—we're not ready for that yet."

Fisch added that a potential return could happen before the end of the season, but at the same time, tried to temper expectations around what that may look like, adding that he has several benchmarks to hit before he can even get scanned in an attempt to return.

"We'd have to get him into football shape and football conditioning," Fisch added. "He has to go through training camp in terms of two days of practice with just helmets, three days of practice in shoulder pads, and then full pads, so there's an acclimation. If you don't participate in training camp, you have to go back to the training camp acclimation. I don't know exactly the days, but we're probably talking about once he gets cleared, you're not playing him on that Saturday by any means; it's still going to take some time after that."

"I'm not thinking we're bringing back the workhorse running back...when he can come back, if he passes medically, he would give us another set of legs and another ball carrier for us."