Washington won a football game over the weekend without scoring an offensive touchdown. For those who have watched the Huskies play this season, that was a sight to behold.

UW posted season lows for passing yards, rushing yards, total yards, yards per play, first downs, and then obviously touchdowns. The Huskies turned the football over four times and still managed a win.

Offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb said the Arizona State defense out-executed UW when it had the ball. The gameplan ASU’s defensive coordinator, Brian Ward, brought into the matchup was a strong one and it gave UW fits.

It wasn’t the two-high look in the secondary that caused issues. Grubb instead pointed to the line of scrimmage, where Arizona State “did a good job of keying motions and adding pressure with those.” The movement up front bothered the Husky offensive line.

“Frustrated,” Grubb said when asked for his biggest takeaway from the day offensively. “There was no way to come off the field without feeling disappointed.”

Though quarterback Michael Penix Jr. was only sacked once, Grubb felt the pass protection simply wasn’t good enough.

“For us, the biggest problem in the pass game was pressure,” he said. “We looked at all the film and there were just way too many times where the pocket was dirty and there were guys running open and (we) just couldn’t get a throw out.”

And that pressure caused Penix to get jumpy.

“I think Mike had at least six or seven throwaways — like, legitimate just getting the ball out of his hands, throwing it away — and that’s way too many. I’m OK with a couple in the course of a game, but a bad pocket shouldn’t force you to throw the ball away that much,” Grubb said.

There just wasn’t enough push. Plain and simple. Washington only managed 13 rushing yards on the day, which didn’t help anything.

The Huskies aren’t a team that leans on the run, but it did just find success with Dillon Johnson the previous week against Oregon.

“Had a couple little spurts there where we got it going, but we shouldn’t have to try to tempo call every time we try to run the ball,” Grubb said.

The frustration was clear immediately after the game and it was just as obvious listening to Grubb when he’d been able to dive into the film.

During the game, UW moved Parker Brailsford to right guard and brought in Landen Hatchett to man the center spot. Grubb said that was an adjustment to try and fix the interior penetration that ASU was having.

“We were looking for answers,” Grubb said.

UW is confident Julius Buelow will be healthy this week, and inserting him back into the mix on the offensive line gives UW another potential adjustment there. One thing’s clear: this will be a work week.

“A lot of things to figure out,” Grubb said. “Some movement things the offensive line has to do a better job with that definitely affected how we executed both in the pass protection and the run game. It’s gotta get corrected. It certainly wasn’t good enough.”