NEW ORLEANS — For most of Monday night, Michael Penix Jr. was easy to find. If his Washington Huskies were on offense, he had the ball in his hands, throwing darts from every arm angle, making one right read, then another, then pulling back a handoff to run straight through the teeth of Texas’s front. And if the Huskies were on defense, Penix, their 23-year-old quarterback, sat in the same spot on the bench, almost at midfield.
But in the last minute of the Sugar Bowl, Penix walked to the sideline, disappearing in a crush of purple jerseys. No. 2 Washington’s defense was in the middle of a sinister experiment, seeing how far it could bend without breaking into a million tiny pieces. No. 3 Texas pushed to the Washington 28 with 30 seconds left … to the 12 with 15 seconds left … the Superdome shaking at the possibility of a final lead change. Penix watched Quinn Ewers, Texas’s quarterback, drop back as the clock hit all zeros. Dylan Morris, Washington’s starter until Penix transferred in from Indiana before last season, slid in next to Penix, their whole season riding on another player’s throw.
Now let’s back up a moment. Games are not decided solely by the end, no matter how much the drama of endings can make it seem that way. They are decided when a quarterback goes 29 for 38 for 430 yards and two touchdowns. They are decided in the first quarter, when that quarterback’s first pass is a 77-yard gain that leads to a tone-setting score. They are decided in the second quarter, when that quarterback sprays completions on a nine-play touchdown drive. They are decided in the third quarter, when that quarterback, tasked with somehow outdoing himself, steps up in the pocket and fires a laser, splitting two defenders to hit Jalen McMillan for another touchdown.
Advertisement
Or maybe games are decided, at least somewhat, when that quarterback completes 12 passes in a row.
Big games are often decided by big-time players, one micro decision at a time. So as it was, the Sugar Bowl — a 37-31 win for Washington over Texas after Ewers’s final pass was knocked incomplete — was decided by Michael Penix Jr. And that nudged Washington to a matchup with No. 1 Michigan for the national title Monday.
“With a good defense like we were facing in Texas, he had to kind of resort to all the tools that he has and all the skill sets that make him special and … in my mind, the best player in college football,” Washington Coach Kalen DeBoer said. “This guy, really all month, was on another level as far as his mission to make sure that this happened.”
Don’t stop at 14-0 on the season, Washington’s last before joining Michigan in the Big Ten later this year. Since Penix and DeBoer teamed up, the Huskies are 25-2 overall and 10-0 against ranked opponents. Penix, who once had four straight seasons end with injuries, was a Heisman Trophy finalist last month and is still playing — still thriving — in January. On Sunday night, before the game of his life, he asked his teammates to come 15 minutes early to a meeting so he could address them himself.
Advertisement
DeBoer didn’t know Penix’s plans. But the Huskies are used to following Penix, to watching everything he does and listening to everything he has to say.
“Man, I feel like everything happened for a reason,” Penix said after the win. “Coming out of high school, I’m going to be honest … when I committed to Indiana University, my dad, he didn’t really want me to go there. He didn’t understand why I was going there. So that was something that was hard for me, just having somebody that I love the most not really … he didn’t see my vision. But obviously it led me to here.”
“He’s our rock,” said Morris, who spent most of Monday’s game with Penix, chatting when Penix wanted to chat, giving him space when he seemed in a quieter mood. “Nothing with him surprises me anymore because we see it every day. The building could have been literally falling down tonight and he would have stayed calm.”
In that final minute, after Penix left his seat on the bench, Morris stood on it and pumped the crowd for more noise. But for the last few plays, he stood by Penix, then told him he loved him when the game was theirs. While his teammates scrambled, trading helmets for hats, pulling T-shirts over their jerseys and pads, Penix did an ESPN interview at the center of the field. Once it was over, a public relations staffer steered him toward the stage, where he was showered with confetti and awarded a trophy as the Sugar Bowl’s most outstanding player.
Advertisement
At some point, the remaining fans belted Prince’s “Purple Rain.” Penix shouted into a few random iPhones that were shoved into his hand. On his way to the stage, Troy Dannen, Washington’s athletic director since October, wrapped Penix in a bear hug. One Husky, talking quietly to another, called the left-handed quarterback “that f---ing dude.”
“He was at the bottom; he was at the top,” said Rome Odunze, Penix’s top wide receiver. “And he was at the bottom again, and now he’s at the top, shining.”
After the ceremony, Penix had one thing in mind: family. Behind the Huskies’ bench, they all wore his No. 9 jersey, jumping up and down as he approached. To reach them, he cut through the crowd without stopping, Euro-stepping past one photographer and juking by the next. His relatives and friends passed his trophy through the first couple of rows. They posed for a group photo or 10. Soon, Penix would move along the railing and give every fan a high-five. When he would see a young boy, he would reach out his hand, inviting the kid to tug off his white wristband and take it home.
But first, Penix considered how to get into the stands to hug his loved ones. He pressed his hands against a folding table, seeing if it could bear his weight should he use it as a trampoline. All together, his family yelled and held their hands up, telling him to not even think about it. Monday was not the end. Penix still has Michigan to beat.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZMCxu9GtqmhqYGeBcHyQaGdrZ52esKmtxKVkqZ2ensVuttFmqq6fkad6o7vWpWY%3D