On the night before the Purdue game, Jedd Fisch conducted bed check with his University of Washington football players at the road hotel.
It wasn't necessarily to see if anyone had gone out looking for a West Lafayette night spot with a band, a pool table and beer on tap, but rather whether some of his guys were still visiting the porcelain throne.
Specifically, he went to visit with running back Trey Cooley, who was one of a dozen and a half Huskies who came down with the flu during the week, barely practiced and had his availability against the Boilermakers put in question.
The Troy transfer gave himself a clean bill of health. He was fairly emphatic about it.
"I'm over it," Cooley told his UW coach. "I'm good. Give me the ball."
In fact, the 5-foot-11, 210-pound rusher from Raleigh, North Carolina, seemingly was in better shape than ever, rushing eight times for a career-best 113 yards in the Huskies' 38-26 victory over the Boilermakers, exceeding his previous college high-water mark by a yard.
He supplied the UW (4-3 overall, 1-3 Big Ten) with breakaway runs of 43 and 53 yards, with the latter carry putting him in the end zone and wrapping up the game with 10 and a half minutes remaining to play.
As a freshman for Louisville in his well-traveled career that counts four stops and six seasons, Cooley had his only other 100-yard performance by getting loose for 112 yards on 13 carries in a 28-14 win over Boston College at midseason in 2021.
Against Purdue, it was a most satisfying showing for a guy who last year transferred to Troy of the Sun Belt Conference, tore up a knee a week before the season began with him in the running for the starting job and forced him to miss the entire year.
The season before in 2024, Cooley suffered a concussion on a kickoff return for Georgia Tech, one that came against Florida State and limited him to just three games after it left him with headaches, light-sensitivity issues and depression.
After basically two seasons of inactivity, it took Cooley some time to get his football legs back in Montlake. In six previous UW outings, he had rushed for 1, 22, 22, 5, 0 and 2 yards, with a long gainer of 13.
On his first Husky carry of the season against Washington State in the Apple Cup, in fact, he dropped a pitch for a 6-yard loss.
In Friday night's long-overdue UW victory, Cooley got to show everyone what he can do when healthy, or nearly healthy.
"I thought he really ran the ball pretty well," Fisch said. "I thought all of his reads for the most part were pretty clean. It was nice to break a long one."
It appears any nerves, knee issues or flu aftereffects are way behind him, like a Purdue defender giving chase.
Add us as a preferred source on Google