Commentary: Jedd Fisch nailed his UW introduction. Can he nail down top recruits?

His answers landed well, but can he land the whales?

He hit all the right notes, but can he lure noteworthy talent?

These are the questions Huskies fans should be asking when it comes to new Washington football coach Jedd Fisch. He nailed Tuesday’s introductory news conference – but can he nail down top recruits?

Fisch knows as well as anyone how crucial personnel is when it comes to hanging banners. He said as much midway through his speech at the football offices of Husky Stadium.

“You can compete with schematics, but you win with people,” he said.

In this sense, he was referring to the culture of a successful football program. But those words can easily be applied to that old saying: “It’s not the X’s and O’s but the Jimmys and the Joes.”

Fisch is the new coach on Montlake for a variety of reasons, but the primary one is his recruiting acumen. He took over an Arizona program that was winless the season before he arrived, then went 1-11 in 2021, 5-7 in 2022 and 10-3 this past season.

Two of those ’23 losses, by the way, were in overtime, and the third by seven against UW. And though such an ascent requires development and game-planning, the Wildcats rose due to their upgrade in talent.

Not once from 2015-20 – before Fisch arrived in Tucson – did Arizona crack the top 40 in 247sports.com’s recruiting rankings. From 2018-20, it wasn’t even in the top 50. But in ’22? The Wildcats’ class was ranked 22nd – the highest in more than a decade. Fisch followed that with a top-40 ranking the next year, which was the second-most-acclaimed class for the Wildcats since 2014.

Of course, it takes more than just nabbing players to create a dynamic team. Arizona finishing 11th in the country this season spoke to Fisch’s and his staff’s ability to mold.

Still, to make that kind of splash that early into your tenure – and to retain those West Coast recruiting ties when coming up to Seattle – it’s the sort of thing that can make a first-year athletic director such as UW’s Troy Dannen look real good, real fast.

“We wanted a recruiter. And not just somebody who knew they had to recruit, but somebody who was maniacal about it,” Dannen said Tuesday.

This was one area in which Fisch’s predecessor, Kalen DeBoer, was relatively unproven. Few will argue against the idea that Washington’s program is an upgrade over Arizona’s. One has been a mainstay in the Pac-12 title chase and two-time College Football Playoff participant since 2016, and the other notoriously middling before last season.

And yet, DeBoer was unable to lock down a top-25 class in his two years at Washington, and he left for Alabama with UW’s class outside the top 40.

This hardly means the program is better now than if DeBoer, who went 25-3 with the Huskies, had stuck around. But in terms of long-term success? If Fisch’s recruiting chops live up to the hype, Washington can certainly stay relevant nationally.

It’s all conjecture at this point, though. College football history is littered with coaches who rose to prominence at lower-profile programs before being devoured on the bigger stage.

Fisch has really had only one successful year as a head coach. Ty Willingham had success before heading to Washington, too. Nobody really knows anything about how UW will fare going forward. All fans can do is hope.

That said, the big question on said fans’ minds is whether Fisch would stick around if he does have success. It was DeBoer, remember, who spoke of laying down roots in the Pacific Northwest two years before bolting for Tuscaloosa (which, as I’ve said before, I don’t blame him for).

Fisch offered no promises of long-term commitment but implied that Washington was, to a large degree, a destination school.

“The Big Ten and the SEC right now are who’s leading the football pathways,” Fisch said. “If you look at what teams traditionally compete, it’s about the same 12 or 14 teams. Washington is one of those 12 or 14 teams. That’s why we coach, to be able to take a seat at that table and give yourself a chance every single year with resources beyond belief.”

Speaking of resources, it’s imperative that the folks at Montlake Futures – the official NIL collective of Washington athletics – provide the program with the money necessary to recruit competitively against the biggest brands in college football. You might not like that this is where the sport is, but it’s the reality.

If that green tool is available, though, Fisch appears to have the goods to capitalize. “Appears,” of course, being the operative word.