What Jedd Fisch said about Demond Williams Jr. on KJR

The coach addressed the saga publicly for the first time.

In his first public comments since quarterback Demond Williams Jr. considered leaving Washington before deciding to stay, coach Jedd Fisch described “a very interesting week of learning” during a Friday afternoon appearance on flagship station Sports Radio KJR with hosts Dave “Softy” Mahler and Dick Fain.

Fisch neither admonished nor outright excused Williams for announcing his intent to transfer after signing a new NIL licensing agreement with UW — only to reverse course and announce Thursday that he’s staying put — and said conversations with Williams revealed a player who is “excited” to continue playing for the Huskies.

Noting that “I’m the 49-year-old, I’m the head coach, I’m responsible for our program,” Fisch said he apologized to women’s soccer coach Nicole Van Dyke “on behalf of Washington football” for the timing of Williams’ initial announcement, which came during Tuesday’s celebration of life for women’s soccer player Mia Hamant.

Fisch said he also has reached out to Hamant’s mom and dad, “and I want to make sure they understand that one had nothing to do with the other, and while the timing we all wish was different, I can promise you, from my conversations with Demond, there was zero intent at all to take anything away from that service.”

Here’s what else to know about Fisch’s appearance with Mahler and Fain:

He’s not going to touch the tampering discussion. “I really don’t want to get into that, the tampering or the discussions or the communication,” Fisch said. “Everybody wants to be involved in those, and I try to tend not to want to be involved in those. I prefer much more to be involved in talking about what a good football team we’re going to have. I think I want to get involved in being able to help and educate our kids on the decisions they make, the consequences we have, and then how to be able to overcome some consequences, and also continue to become great communicators.”

His message to fans who are upset about how this played out: “My specific message would be this — give us eight months. The first game is not until September. We are going to work extremely hard as a football team to continue to be a part of this community, and to reach out, and to be in the forefront, and to show the type of guys that we have brought in here and we will continue to bring in here. We’re not playing our first game next Saturday. … This is the first time that we’ve seen many, many things that have occurred in college football.

“I hope that our fans understand, they’re fans of (the) University of Washington. They’re fans of this institution, the greatest setting in college football, what I believe is one of the greatest programs in college football. It’s why I’m here. It’s why I wanted to stay here, regardless of rumor, regardless of what people thought. I love the fact that I get the coach at the University of Washington, and I hope that our fans recognize and believe in what we’re trying to get done here.”

The rest of the team, Fisch said, will have to figure out for itself how it accepts Williams back. He pointed to the quick timeline — just 48 hours — as something that might aid that process. “This isn’t something that has gone on for weeks or months,” he said. “This isn’t something that has been a contractual hold out that we’re concerned in this period of time where, ‘oh, my God, we’ve been away from the team for so long.’”

Fisch said he’s sure Williams will have plenty of conversations with his teammates upon returning.

“It’s important that we all recognize how we can learn from this,” Fisch said, a theme he repeated a few different ways. “Our team is really full of character and integrity. We really believe in doing the right thing. We’re also — me as the head coach, our assistant coaches, our players — we’re all learning, and we’re all trying to get better and better and better.”

To the idea that Williams is only returning because he couldn’t get out of his contract, Fisch said every indication he received from Williams suggested “he was excited to lead this team … he was excited to be able to compete to be in the CFP. As he was seeing the additions (to) our team and the amount of players returning — which we’re really proud of — I think he is really excited about surrounding himself with such talent. Whatever perception is out there, I believe the most important thing is what they believe in the locker room, and I think I’m going to leave it up to the players to really work together to what would be building a championship culture and a championship season.

“The most important thing I had to hear is that, ‘I want to come back.’ At 19 years old, I think he and I had a great conversation about … how do we learn from this? How do we get better? … One of the biggest parts of it was a learning experience.

“... When he told me he wants to come back and he wants to lead this football program, and he wants to do everything he possibly can to help us win every game we’re going to compete in, I have to believe that. I’ve known Demond for four and a half years.”

In case any question remained as to whether Fisch saw any of this coming, he made clear that no, he did not. “There was no part of that that I was expecting,” he said.

Fisch noted this is the first year of revenue sharing between athletic departments and athletes, and that process requires a great deal of education. That’s something he said he can get better at — “the communication of the decision to commit, the decision to be a part of the program, the communication factor of explaining to these kids that what they’re going to hear and what they’re going to see might not always be true. Helping these guys understand that it’s really important to make sure you do what you say. … I need to do a better job of continuing to educate the team on 2026 college football, in comparison to what 2024 and 2025 was.”

More generally, he said: “They’re learning. They’re trying to understand, they’re trying to figure out, what does this all look like? What is it that I signed up for? What is it that we’re living in right now? You start hearing about the craziness of so many different places and so many different kids. (Williams) and I had a conversation about what we both thought was best, and then it took 48 hours or so to really land where we felt the plane should be landed, and I think over those 48 hours, we both agreed the plane should be landed at SeaTac, and we should be able to really learn, be able to educate the rest of our team about what really happened, be able to understand the value of time and timing, and be able to talk through how we can make this a stronger team because of what occurred.”

As for what Williams could or should do to make amends with the fan base or his teammates? Fisch, I think wisely, chose not to prescribe anything, at least publicly, and said any actions taken by Williams need to be of his own volition.

“I don’t want to tell somebody what to do,” he said. “What I want Demond to do … I want Demond to continue to grow, to mature, and to become who he is. He’s someone that is learning how to be a pro, and I think over time he’s going to learn and get better and appreciate so many things. I really hope that over these six months that our fan base, and you, and the media, and everybody involved understand that really what we’re talking about is, for a two-day span, we had a player that decided to make a decision to kind of learn about the college landscape in a manner that I don’t think he ever felt he would have had to learn. And now we all have learned a ton about college football, and I hope we’re all better because of what we learned.”

— Christian Caple, On Montlake

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