Kalen DeBoer left for Alabama on January 12, 2024. Michael Penix Jr. entered the NFL Draft. Rome Odunze, Ja'Lynn Polk, Jalen McMillan all entered the draft or the portal. The title-game roster dismantled in three weeks.
2024 — The DeBoer Exit Year
Washington went 6-7 in its first Big Ten season, finished under Jedd Fisch one year after the CFP title-game appearance, and produced the program's first losing year since 2008.
The Shape — week-by-week · cumulative W–L below
Who carried it
- Will RogersQB2,458 passing yards
- Demond Williams Jr.QB944 passing yards
- Jonah ColemanRB1,053 rushing yards
- Giles JacksonWR893 receiving yards
- Denzel BostonWR834 receiving yards
- Jeremiah HunterWR490 receiving yards
- Carson BruenerLB104 tackles
- Alphonzo TuputalaLB81 tackles
- Kamren FabiculananS54 tackles
- Isaiah WardEDGE3 sacks
- Russell Davis IIDL3 sacks
- Voi TunuufiEDGE2.5 sacks
Season leaders, 2024.
Jedd Fisch hired from Arizona on January 14. The Big Ten membership took effect July 1. The program's first road trips of the new league schedule: Rutgers, Iowa, Penn State, Indiana. The infrastructure the Petersen and DeBoer regimes had built was still there; the roster and scheme were not.
The regular season finished 6-6; the Sun Bowl invite declined. The program's first bowl-skipping year since 2008, negotiated down inside a coaching-transition context. The Big Ten welcome card, in full.
"Go Dawgs. The dock still floats."
2024 is the chapter that re-opened every question the 2023 run was supposed to have closed. The DeBoer exit, the roster drain, the Big Ten schedule, and the Fisch regime's first year were all compressed into twelve months. A 6-7 year with a bowl-declined ending is not a soft-landing year for a program one season removed from a title-game appearance. The Apple Cup survived, and it survived non-conference. The Oregon rivalry carried into the Big Ten. The program's infrastructure is intact. Whether the edge-case-contender register survives Fisch's second year is the year's open question. The chapter's legacy is the specific cost of the title-game run's ceiling — the altitude is paid for in the year that follows, and 2024 is what the payment looked like.