Michael Penix Jr. and the Washington Huskies are just a single win away from capping off the best season in school history. Already sitting at 14-0 with a Pac-12 championship and a College Football Playoff semifinal win over the Texas Longhorns under their belt, the only obstacle left standing in the way of college football immortality is a win over the top-ranked Michigan Wolverines on Monday, January 8th in Houston, Texas. But even if the Huskies win, and even if Penix plays just as well as he did against Texas ā€” he was practically perfect ā€” there's still no guarantee that one of the most prolific college quarterbacks of the last decade will even be on the draft boards of some NFL teams come April.

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ā€œHe won't even be on our board. That medical is going to be so bad that we're going to sub-board him. The only way we'll touch him is when there's no risk,ā€ Yahoo Sports' Charles Robinson says, paraphrasing sentiment he's heard around the NFL.

The medical history that Robinson alludes to is one that could fill a high school textbook: Penix suffered a torn right ACL in 2018, a dislocated SC joint in his non-throwing shoulder in 2019, another torn right ACL in 2020, and an AC separation in his throwing shoulder in 2021.

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Any normal human being would've given up at this point, and although Penix admitted there were times that he considered quitting football, he's still standing, still playing, and still throwing one of the prettiest and most accurate balls you'll ever see from a collegiate quarterback. I don't care if teams need to invest in one of those mechanical knee braces that Alfred fit Bruce Wayne for in The Dark Knight Rises, we need to get Michael Penix Jr. on an NFL field soon, because the Washington Huskies quarterback can absolutely ball.

And as I said back in December when I claimed that heĀ should've won the Heisman Trophy, I still see Penix hoisting the College Football Playoff championship trophy on January 8th.