Demond Williams Jr. is Washington’s most important player.
That’s true of most starting quarterbacks for most teams, but it’s especially true for a player as dynamic as Williams who will be expected to make such significant progress against top competition in his second year as the starter.
For our annual July ranking of UW’s 22 most important players, though, we omit quarterbacks and focus instead on evaluating the players whose relative importance is not quite so self-evident.
As I note each year, this list always has hits and misses, some of which might become apparent early in training camp. Also, a reminder that this isn’t necessarily a ranking of Washington’s best players, though you will see some correlation. Rather, it’s a ranking of the Huskies’ most important players, which takes into account talent, experience, leadership, positional depth and, most crucially, what it would mean for the team if that player either couldn’t play, doesn’t perform to expectations, or, in some cases, performs to expectations for the first time.
Only six players on last year’s preseason Most Important list appear on this year’s version. Further, only one player on this year’s list appeared in the top-13 of last year’s list. That’s reflective of the seven players UW lost to the NFL Draft, each of whom appeared in last year’s top nine, but also of how many young (or injured) players emerged throughout the course of the 2025 season. There are three linebackers on this year’s list, for example, who were not among the team’s 22 Most Important players at the start of last season.
Five others from last year’s Most Important list exhausted their eligibility, while two others transferred.
Away we go: