Michael Penix Jr. and Rome Odunze are just fine with national championship expectations, and are embracing it in every sense of the word.

“That’s what we all want, and that’s what we believe we can get. That’s just my confidence,” Penix said in a recent interview with ESPN.

The Huskies can dream of trophies because they won their final 7 games to finish No. 8 nationally, and several star players bypassed the NFL Draft to return for 2023, including Penix, top wide receiver Rome Odunze and edge rushers Bralen Trice and Zion Tupuola-Fetui.

“I know that some people are scared to go at that, like, ‘What if we don’t win a national championship? The season ends in a failure,’ but it would be wrong for us not to strive for the top,” said Odunze, who led the Pac-12 with 1,145 receiving yards in 2022. “If we want to be our best version of ourselves, then what’s possible for us is the national championship. We’re not going to shy away from that fact, and neither are we going to sulk and moan, if that’s not exactly how it works out.

“We’re going to work our ass off and go out there and compete.”

In a conference that arguably has the most quarterback depth in the country, Odunze is also in favor of individual goals, and wants to help Penix become Washington’s first Heisman winner, and along the way try to win the Biletnikoff Award himself as the nation’s top receiver.

If it happens, it’d be a historic story. Washington last won the Pac-12 in 2018, and the program’s last national championship came in 1991.