Jedd Fisch, Demond Williams Jr. and the attention economy
On marketing a star quarterback in 2025.
SEATTLE — No matter the young quarterback’s ultimate production, the Demond Williams Jr. Experience at Washington already is unique in multiple ways.
Most simply, he is an athletic talent unlike many (any?) the Huskies have ever had, with perhaps a combination of throwing and running ability that, taken together, represent the pinnacle of that dual skill in program history. There’s no telling whether he’ll become a Rushmore figure like Marques Tuiasosopo, or a top-10 pick like Jake Locker. But it’s fair to believe, based on last year’s sample size, that Washington never has started a more talented passer who is as dangerous with his legs as Williams.
Nor has any UW coach done more than Jedd Fisch to publicize his belief that the team’s starting quarterback — a 19-year-old with two career starts, no less — can be among the best in the country.
College football in the modern era is ruled by an attention economy. Fisch doesn’t just accept this reality — one at which past UW coaches, some highly successful, might have chafed — he seemingly embraces it at full tilt, rarely missing an opportunity to talk up his program or his players.
This has been especially true of Williams, whom Fisch dubbed the future “face of the program” before he’d started a game.
This was a topic of discussion on Ep. 152 of Say Who, Say Pod, but I wanted to expand on it in writing, because I think it’s important to understand with regard to the way Fisch runs a program — and the way, one could argue, a coach should run a program, and perhaps even the way a coach must run a program at a school like Washington in 2025.