Washington HC Jedd Fish Talks Future of CFB, McVay, Harbaugh & More with Rich

Jedd Fisch, entering his third season running Washington, took the call from an office stocked with game balls, helmets, a lake view, and quotes from every accomplished coach he has worked for. Seven names hang there: Belichick, Spurrier, Shanahan, Harbaugh, McVay, Carroll, Billick.

That includes two seasons on Jim Harbaugh's Michigan staff, where the no-chicken rule was not a bit. "No chicken allowed. Got eliminated from the pregame meal. It was a steak, it was a piece of broccoli, and it was a baked potato."

All seven shape how he runs Washington, though Fisch stays true to himself first. What he took from Harbaugh is that you don't need slogan soup. The Huskies operate on two words. Be a pro.

The one he lingered on was Sean McVay, whose staff Fisch joined in years two and three, a 15-3 Super Bowl season followed by a year out of the playoffs. What separates McVay, in Fisch's telling, isn't the offensive mind everyone already praises. It's stability and connection, boiled down to a line McVay credits to his father.

"You compete with schematics, but you win with people."

Fisch watched it work on recruiting trips of the professional variety, taking Ndamukong Suh to Nobu in Malibu so McVay could explain why he should sign. Dante Fowler and Clay Matthews followed. The same trait, he argues, is why Myles Garrett is in Los Angeles and why Aaron Donald has his pilot light lit again, because nobody attempts a comeback for a coach they can't stand.

The Huskies are five practices into camp with 16 returning starters and one of college football's youngest teams. Quarterback Demond Williams is the piece Fisch is happiest about, mentally as much as physically. The January departure drama and lawsuit chatter he waved off as the college equivalent of a two-day NFL holdout. "Who cares? Keep it moving." Williams is in year three of the program and year two as a starter, with 16 starts behind him.

His NFL alumni are doing fine, too. Denzel Boston has Cleveland excited and drew praise from Todd Monken for how prepared he has been. Sean Payton said Jonah Coleman doesn't come across as a rookie, which Fisch correctly identified as a manhole cover being thrown around. Tacario Davis is having a strong camp in Cincinnati. Second round or fourth, Fisch said, what mattered was showing up as pros.

On the sport's larger mess, Fisch has an uncomfortable answer. Reform does not start with players. It starts with coaches.

"We have to start with making coaches contracts enforceable," he said. Buyouts are a workaround, and the message is corrosive, because it's hard to hold a 19-year-old to a commitment the adults abandon whenever the money is right. In the NFL, you need permission to leave, and one of the other 31 teams cannot simply hire McVay away. So why can any college program that can afford it poach whoever it likes?

He also wants a number. Washington, by his own admission, does not spend enough, and he would like someone to say what the cap is, with outside marketing deals requiring approval. If Congress won't act, Fisch expects a breakaway, programs building a partly privatized league on their own terms.

"Right now, this is not working," he said. The games are great, but a sport that runs to a courtroom every week cannot plan for next year.

Washington's own next year opens with an Apple Cup in week one and adds a second rivalry game in week 12. Fisch calls it the rivalry sandwich, and he remembers how last year's version went.