Washington State vs Washington Prediction, Picks & Odds — Sep 6, 2026

Washington State spent last fall building one of the better defenses in the country: 19th nationally, 15th against the pass, the reason a 7-6 team was so hard to score on. Most of it now plays in Ames. When Jimmy Rogers left for Iowa State after a single season in Pullman, 15 Cougars followed him, 12 of them defenders, including edge rushers Isaac Terrell — seven of the team's 28 sacks — and Jack Janikowski. Safety Adrian Wilson and corner Colby Humphrey graduated, as did linebackers Caleb Francl and Parker McKenna, who combined for 157 tackles. In all, 22 defenders left this offseason and 18 defensive transfers arrived from 15 different schools. The two-deep that walks into Husky Stadium on Sept. 6 has never played a snap together.

Washington's turnover is the opposite kind, and quieter. Demond Williams Jr. is back after throwing for 3,065 yards and 25 touchdowns and running for 612 more. Jonah Coleman, Adam Mohammed and Denzel Boston are not, and those three took 3,161 scrimmage yards and 35 touchdowns with them. The Huskies return their quarterback and almost no one who touched the ball around him; the Cougars return nearly everyone who touched it and neither quarterback who threw it. Washington won last November's meeting in Pullman 59-24. This is the first Apple Cup at Husky Stadium since 2023, and the first the rivalry has played as a season opener.

Most of the gap is last season's work. Washington went 9-4 and scored 34.1 points a game; Washington State went 7-6 and scored 22.5. That body of work is worth close to seven points of the 14, more than any other single factor, with Husky Stadium worth another four and a half and Washington's roster talent, 24th in the country to Washington State's 81st, worth a bit more than four. Pulling the other way is continuity: the Cougars bring back 91 percent of last season's production to Washington's 54, which claws three and a half points back.

◄Washington StatefavorsWashington►

Last season's body of worklast year's power rating, regressed toward the averageWashington +7

Roster talentoverall talent level of the roster — recruiting pedigree plus an independent preseason roster gradeWashington +4

Returning productionhow much of last year's production is back this seasonWashington State +3

Quarterbackthe projected starter's quality and how settled the job isWashington +2

Each ingredient of our projection and the side it favors — bars toward Washington are why it's the pick (home field is counted separately).

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One settled quarterback, one job still open

Williams is the best player who will be on the field, a third-year starter and a genuine dual threat who completed passes at a high rate on 354 attempts and carried 143 times. He briefly entered the portal in January and reversed himself two days later; Jedd Fisch has treated him as the entrenched No. 1 ever since, with Stanford transfer Elijah Brown behind him as depth, not competition.

Washington State is starting from nothing. Zevi Eckhaus (306 attempts, 2,092 yards) is gone and Jaxon Potter (95 attempts) transferred to Old Dominion, leaving six of last season's 407 pass attempts on the roster, all belonging to Julian Dugger. New head coach Kirby Moore has kept the job formally open through camp among Dugger, true freshman Owen Eshelman and the clear front-runner, Pinnick, who threw for 2,804 yards and 29 touchdowns on 304 attempts and ran it 119 times for 411 yards at UC Davis. Those are Big Sky numbers. He has never faced a defense at this level.

When Washington has the ball

The Huskies' run game ranked 8th in the country, and that number belongs to players in other uniforms. Coleman (156 carries, 758 yards, 15 touchdowns) and Mohammed (106 carries, now at California) took 88 percent of the carries Washington gave its running backs. Strip them out and Williams, with those 143 carries and 612 yards, is the leading returning rusher on the roster. Oregon transfer Jayden Limar (46 carries, 262 yards, three scores) projects to handle early downs, and sophomore Jordan Washington is the one to watch: 27 carries for 233 yards a year ago, a tiny sample that produced the best per-carry work on the team. Protecting all of it is Greene, the No. 19 overall recruit in a class ranked 15th with 11 blue-chippers, starting at left tackle as a true freshman with four holdovers, center Landen Hatchett among them, beside him.

Through the air, Williams throws to Dezmen Roebuck (42 catches, 560 yards, seven touchdowns) and tight end Decker DeGraaf (32-360), with Kennesaw State transfer Christian Moss (44 catches, 682 yards) taking over outside for Boston's 62 catches and 11 scores. They attack a Cougar defense whose five returning players — tackle Kaden Beatty and linebacker Jack Ellison the most familiar — made 28 tackles and a combined 1.5 sacks last season. Everything else is imported: corners Jalil Tucker (Oregon State) and Khamari Terrell (Texas State), safety Jeremiah Bernard (Cal Poly), linebacker Nylan Brown (Kent State), and a front stocked with Matyus McLain (Idaho), Eduwa Okundaye (Arizona) and Balaam Miller (Saint Francis).

That pattern has a track record. Since 2022, 23 FBS teams have finished a season with a top-30 defense and then lost a dozen or more defenders to the portal. Nineteen of the 23 were worse the next fall, the typical one sliding from about 20th in the country to 53rd; the four that held up were blue-chip reloaders replacing departures with recruits already on campus. Washington State lost 22 defenders, is replacing them with strangers under a first-year staff, and signed a class ranked 128th with seven commits and no blue-chippers. It was already 53rd against the run with its starters intact.

When Washington State has the ball

Here the Cougars get the one thing a big underdog can build on. Washington's defense ranked 19th overall and 9th against the run, but it never got to the quarterback: 21 sacks in 12 games ranked 91st, 51 tackles for loss 119th. Bryun Parham took 116 tackles and 10.5 of those sacks to the NFL, Khmori House went with him, and both starting corners, Ephesians Prysock and Tacario Davis, are gone. Safety Alex McLaughlin (90 tackles, six passes defended, two interceptions) is the one high-volume returner, with edge rushers Jacob Lane (3.5 sacks) and Isaiah Ward (2.0) back. The replacements are imported and experienced: linebackers Jacob Manu (Arizona) and Xe'ree Alexander (UCF), corner Emmanuel Karnley (Virginia) opposite sophomore Dylan Robinson, and Kai McClendon (Mississippi State) up front.

Pinnick would attack that behind the only fully intact starting unit in the building: Ashton Tripp, Jonny Lester, Kyle Martin, Noah Dunham and Jaylin Caldwell, five returning linemen, no transfers, no freshmen. Kirby Vorhees is back after 138 carries for 576 yards, and Tony Freeman (54 catches, 588 yards) is the one proven target left with Josh Meredith's 57 catches gone. Behind them the room is thin: tight end Trey Leckner had 23 catches, and the portal adds are close to empty — Darrius Clemons (Oregon State) has no 2025 game log at all, Tank Hawkins (Florida) two catches, Jack Pedersen (UCLA) 11. An offense that ranked 87th passing and 76th rushing gave the ball away 20 times against 11 takeaways, 123rd of 136 teams.

The floor, the ceiling, and what swings between

The single likeliest scoreboard is 24-17, with a realistic range from a six-point Washington State upset to a 33-point Husky win. This is a one-score game 30 percent of the time and a 20-point Washington win 37 percent of the time. The Cougar ceiling is the version where Pinnick plays clean: a quarterback who moves the chains with his legs behind a veteran line keeps second-and-6 manageable, bleeds clock and holds Washington to fewer possessions. Freeman on early downs and Vorhees making the run worth staying with is how this stays a two-score game into the fourth quarter. The floor is a first FBS road start that produces two giveaways in Husky Stadium — Washington gets short fields, Williams does not have to do much, and the margin runs past 30.

0%

-38

0%

-32

1%

-24

2%

-18

5%

-10

9%

-4

14%

+4

18%

+10

17%

+18

15%

+24

10%

+32

5%

+38

2%

+46

Washington State winsWashington wins

Market: Washington −23Projected: Washington by 14 (81%)

The range of outcomes for this game. Each bar is how often the final margin lands in that range — the more it leans toward Washington, the more likely Washington wins.

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What each side needs to beat the number

Washington is laying 22.8, nine points steeper than this game figures to be decided by, so the Huskies have to be considerably better than their projected day to get there. The checklist starts with scoring on nearly every possession: Washington finished 15th nationally at turning scoring chances into points, and that drive-finishing efficiency, not any one long play, is what turns a 14-point win into a 23-point one. Call it even money. Next is a style problem, because Washington ranked 77th in explosive plays, and a team that grinds out long drives tops out in the low 30s. Unlikely to change. Third is the short-field version, winning the turnover battle by two or more, which shows up in about a quarter of the outcomes here. A long shot. The one item in the Huskies' favor is game shape: no slow start, up multiple scores by halftime.

Washington State's list is more modest and more achievable. Shorten the game with long, clock-eating drives and no three-and-outs that hand Washington extra possessions, which is hard against this front but is the only tempo lever the Cougars have. Force the low-scoring version of the afternoon, since Washington State's competitive games run low-scoring 39 percent of the time against 32 percent on Washington's. Win or tie the turnover battle — no pick-six, no lost fumble in Husky territory — because in games priced like this one the team that wins the giveaway battle wins about three-quarters of them, right in line with the 75 percent it wins across all of college football (n=650 since 2014). And steal a possession with a fourth down or a special-teams play, because a team down three touchdowns cannot trade drives evenly and stay inside the number. The Cougars' keep-it-close criteria are the more reachable set: this stays inside 22.8 closer to seven times in ten.

Washington by about 14, in the neighborhood of 31-18, and the Huskies take this about four times in five. Williams is the surest thing on the field, and the Cougar defense is being assembled from scratch in Week 1, before a secondary drawn from a dozen schools has learned to pass anything off. What changes the shape of it is the ball. If Pinnick handles his first FBS start cleanly and Vorhees keeps the run honest behind those five returning linemen, this is a two-score game into the fourth quarter. If Washington State gives it away twice, it is settled by the middle of the third.