Familiar Foes in New Homes: Apple Cup Offers Unique Backdrop For 4th Dickert-Fisch Clash

It's hard to glean a ton from what Jedd Fisch's Arizona Wildcats put on tape against Jake Dickert and the Washington State Cougars last season, yet it probably offers the best insight for what the now-Washington Huskies head football coach might dial up Saturday in the 116th Apple Cup meeting between the two Evergreen State schools.

In a 44-6 victory over the Cougars in Pullman last season then-sophomore running back Jonah Coleman scored three rushing touchdowns and totaled 168 yards on 15 plays, nearly as many yards by himself that Arizona's Rayshon Luke and WSU's Nakia Watson (176 yards) combined for in the game.

But that was then.

Fisch is 2-0 in his UW early career — the same record his predecessor Kalen DeBoer had in his brief time in Seattle against the Cougars — and searching for his second win against Dickert as a head coach leading the Huskies into a unique early season rivalry at Lumen Field on Saturday at 12:30 p.m.

Washington, along with three other former Pac-12 schools, Oregon, UCLA and USC, joined the Big Ten Conference in August 2024, which turned the Apple Cup rivalry game into a non-conference matchup for the first time since 1961.

Additionally, the traditional late-November clash was moved to mid-September, which Fisch sees as a potential benefit fresh off two warmup games against Weber State and Eastern Michigan, both of which UW won by three touchdowns or more.

"I think it's an awesome opportunity to have it Week 3 because it'll enable us to really lock in early in the season," Fisch said on Monday.

"I think it'll give us the best practices we've had all year. I would love to say we would practice the same way no matter who we're playing. But when you do have a rivalry game your practice is a little more amped up. The competitive nature is a little more amped up. The energy on the field is a little bit higher. So it's nice to have that Week 3 of a season."

The 5-foot-9, 229-pound bruiser Coleman — one of six players that joined Fisch at UW who played for him in Tucson — has the same number of touchdowns through two games this season as he did in last season's 35-point win at Arizona and boasts an 89.5 run grade, according to Pro Football Focus, good for No. 5 among all backs.

Coleman has 231 rushing yards and three touchdowns on 27 carries to his credit, and Dickert knows — even with a fifth-year veteran quarterback like Mississippi State transfer Will Rogers — everything starts with the talented Stockton running back.

"Well last year we were like a BB off a tank," Dickert said this week of Coleman's impact against the Cougars. "It wasn't great, and we have to execute our tackling plan better. It's a few things. It's making sure your leverage is on-point. Last year he broke our leverage and was able to make the next guy miss too many times.

"And then it's just swarm tackling. Sometimes it's just grabbing onto a shoe lace, a leg, an arm, whatever you can get ahold of hang on until your boys get there and let's bring him down. It'll be instances where it won't just be one guy making the tackle, but you gotta corral him, you gotta get him before he gets started. Once he gets downhill [with] a head of steam he's tough to deal with."

Dickert notched wins against Fisch in 2021 and 2022 while the now-UW coach was rebuilding an Arizona football program coming off a winless 2020 season under fired coach Kevin Sumlin, before everything clicked last season at Martin Stadium in favor of the Wildcats.

Since beating a similarly decimated Husky program 40-13 in 2021 that saw then-UW head coach Jimmy Lake fired over a month before the Apple Cup, the Cougars have dropped the last two meetings by a combined 10.5 points, roughly twice the number UW is favored by this weekend.

However, with more than three-dozen new players expected to feature in the game that didn't suit up for the Huskies, Saturday will be much different than anything what either team did last season.

"I think this week is completely different," Fisch said. "Two totally different teams. Two totally different things on the line. We were coming off a really, really tough triple-overtime loss to USC, where we were up 17-0 in the first quarter and wound up losing 43-41 in triple-overtime.

"So, our guys had a little bit of edginess about them. Hopefully our guys will have that same edginess about them this week."