Jake Browning, your Rose Bowl underdog
LOS ANGELES — Right around signing day in 2015, Jake Browning sent out direct messages on Twitter to fellow members of the Washington Huskies‘ recruiting class: “Let’s change this program,” he wrote.
Over the previous decade-plus, the Huskies had been soundly mediocre. From 2002 to 2014, they finished ranked in the final AP top 25 just once (No. 25 in 2013), and they last reached the Rose Bowl following the 2000 season. Expectations rose when coach Chris Petersen arrived from Boise State after the 2013 season. But even when Browning enrolled, the team was still somewhat of an afterthought, behind Stanford and Oregon in the Pac-12 North.
There was a lot to change.
Happy bowl season! Here are the key players and storylines for every game, including the playoff.
It’s the first time in the CFP era the Rose Bowl gets its traditional matchup. It’s also the last bowl game for Ohio State coach Urban Meyer, who is retiring after the season.
Myles Gaskin, then a lightly recruited running back from nearby O’Dea High School in Seattle, was one of the players Browning reached out to.
“When I got that [direct message], I was like, ‘Fa sho,'” said Gaskins, who like Browning started as a true freshman. “It’s crazy now that we’ve come full circle.”
Over the past four seasons, Washington has transformed from sleeping giant into the premier program in the Pac-12. The Huskies won the Pac-12 and qualified for the College Football Playoff in 2016 and reached the Fiesta Bowl last season, and they are set to take on the Ohio State Buckeyes on Tuesday in the Rose Bowl Game Presented by Northwestern Mutual.
As a four-year starter, Browning’s fingerprints are all over that turnaround. He’ll leave Seattle as the Pac-12’s all-time winningest quarterback, the school’s all-time leading passer and having enjoyed a 4-0 mark against Washington State in the Apple Cup. By any reasonable measure, Browning’s career, regardless of what happens against the Buckeyes, should be viewed as an overwhelming success.
For a player with his résumé, though, Browning’s reputation as a player has followed a strange path. It peaked in 2016, when he finished sixth in the Heisman Trophy voting, threw 43 touchdowns to just nine interceptions and was named Pac-12 offensive player of the year. It was easy to assume, even with some obvious physical limitations, that college was a pit stop on his way to the NFL.
“Then we lost to Alabama,” Browning said this week.
Since that playoff loss, the Huskies haven’t been the same offensively. They went from 41.8 points per game that season to 36.2 last year to only 26.6 this season. Without receivers John Ross, a first-round NFL pick in 2017, and Dante Pettis, a second-round pick in 2017, Browning hasn’t been able to replicate the level of success he found so quickly in his career. Criticism about his arm strength and decision-making has grown, and it didn’t help his reputation when Petersen benched his fourth-year starter during the second half of the Huskies’ 12-10 loss to Cal on Oct. 27. (His replacement, Jake Haener, then threw a costly pick-six in relief.)
“[Browning’s] a competitor,” Petersen had said after that game. “He’s mad right now. I would expect nothing different out of him. It is what it is.”
Though Browning has thrown just 19 and 16 touchdowns passes over the past two seasons, his QBR, which takes into consideration the full value of a quarterback, doesn’t show a dramatic regression. His QBR of 81.3 as a sophomore, when he had both Ross and Pettis, was less than five full points higher than his rating this season, 76.4 — a minor difference. There is no disputing how less explosive the Huskies have been, but Browning, it seems, has shouldered a disproportionately high amount of the blame.
“You’ve got to look at surrounding cast back then,” Ohio State defensive coordinator Greg Schiano said. “He had some incredibly fast wideouts. He has good people around him now. But I don’t know if they’re all at that experience level they were that year. When you have a special year like they did back then, when you go to the playoff, a lot of things click.”
Browning scoffs at the idea that he’s not a better player now than he was two years ago.
“You put two years of work into something, you hope it makes you better,” he said.
Either way, NFL talent evaluators aren’t optimistic about his future. ESPN’s Mel Kiper Jr. does not have him listed on any of his 2019 draft lists.
So when the postseason draft-showcase games issued their invitations this year, Browning had to settle for the NFLPA Collegiate Bowl, a third-tier game (also to be staged at the Rose Bowl) that mostly features players hoping to sign as undrafted NFL free agents.
Still, Browning said, his goal is to have a long NFL career and then — whenever and however it ends — he wants to get into coaching.
Petersen doesn’t generally like to project how his players will fare in the NFL and probably doesn’t have much to gain by giving a comprehensive, honest assessment about Browning’s chances, but he did offer a scenario in which Browning’s career can progress the way he hopes it will.
“I know this: He has all the qualities, all the intangibles, the work ethic, smarts, the football intelligence, toughness,” Petersen said. “He has all those things, and I know that if he gets with the right people in the right system, I think he can do some really nice things at that level.”
What happens next, though, shouldn’t have any impact on what he means to Washington, where history will view him much more favorably than today’s NFL talent scouts — especially if the Huskies find a way to beat the Buckeyes in Urban Meyer’s final game in charge.
“When I look at him as a quarterback, he’s an outstanding quarterback,” Schiano said. “He understands their scheme very, very well. And he appears to really understand what defenses are doing. So you’re not going to trick them. You’re going to have to go out and out-execute them, and that’s what we hope to do.”
Schiano’s evaluation of Browning is very similar to the one Browning has of himself.
Even dating back to his prolific career at Folsom High School in Northern California, where he set the national high school record for touchdown passes in a season (91) and career (229, in three seasons), Browning has taken a borderline obsessive approach to film study.
“I think a lot of average people look at me, say, ‘What makes this guy so special?’ It’s hard work,” he said. “I’ve prided myself on doing things that other people aren’t willing to do preparation-wise. It’s putting in a lot of hours, working hard to get here.”
That’s what first stood out to Petersen too when Browning first arrived.
“Nobody in our program worked like him in terms of how many hours they put in off the field and then how focused he was, consistent day after day practice-wise,” Petersen said. “He really didn’t practice or prepare like a young guy. It was like a guy who had been here for a long time, and to his credit, he never changed that.”
That’s why Browning has found some peace of mind with any sort of conversation about his legacy.
“I don’t think I could have worked any harder or put any more into it, so the rest is for everybody else to decide — or for Husky fans to decide,” he said.