SEATTLE — As if the patchwork nature of Washington’s 2024 offensive line were not a jarring enough reality, members of that unit walked each day past a reminder of what the Huskies’ o-line accomplished at its zenith.
Each season, the Joe Moore Award honors what it considers to be the nation’s top offensive line. The trophy is perpetual, meaning it lives with the winning team for a year before moving on to the next. So there it sat, 7 feet tall and weighing more than 800 pounds, inside the third-floor lobby of UW’s football operations building after the 2023 team claimed the prestigious prize en route to playing for a national championship.
Drew Azzopardi saw it every day during his first season with the Huskies.
“It definitely gave you motivation walking out in the morning,” he said.
At that point, though, during coach Jedd Fisch’s first season, the trophy was more historical artifact than any sort of realistic carrot. The Huskies lost all five starters from that 2023 season, including NFL Draft picks Troy Fautanu and Roger Rosengarten, and even a part-time starter like Geirean Hatchett transferred to Oklahoma after coach Kalen DeBoer's departure for Alabama. Geirean's younger brother, Landen, was among the few returners, but was working back from an ACL tear.
It all left UW with just seven healthy scholarship offensive linemen during Fisch’s first spring, an oft-repeated piece of trivia that aptly summarizes the state of the roster he inherited. Azzopardi, who had just transferred from San Diego State, practically qualified as a veteran because he had started an entire six games as a redshirt freshman. The Huskies pulled their starting center (D’Angalo Titialii) and a starting guard (Enokk Vimahi) from the spring transfer portal. At left tackle, they alternated between a redshirt freshman playing for the first time (Soane Faasolo) and a transfer who didn’t play football in 2023 (Maximus McCree). Landen Hatchett played in every game at guard or center, though he wasn’t close to full health.
They did what they could — a 27-17 home victory over Michigan was the highlight — but blowout losses at Iowa, Penn State and Oregon made clear that rebuilding the offensive line remained among the program’s top priorities.
To run the ball with better consistency against top Big Ten defenses.
To better protect quarterback Demond Williams Jr.
And, eventually, to speak out loud their goal as a unit — to win the Joe Moore — and actually believe it can be done.
Ahead of a 2026 season the Huskies should begin as a top-25 team, their offensive linemen aren’t shy about saying it: they want the big trophy back.