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Inside The Huskies

4 Starting Jobs Remain Unsettled for Husky Football Opener

UW still has competition at left guard, tight end, wide receiver and edge rusher.
Dan Raley|
John Mills battled with Paki Finau for the left offensive guard starting job.
John Mills battled with Paki Finau for the left offensive guard starting job. | Skylar Lin Visuals

Season-opening football lineups released on Monday show four University of Washington position battles remain unsettled, including three on offense, leading up to the Huskies' Saturday night outing against Colorado State.

Freshman John Mills and redshirt freshman Paki Finau are still in competition to determine the starter at left offensive guard -- with Mills bidding to become the first true freshman lineman to start in nearly a decade.

Penn State senior transfer Omari Evans and freshman Raiden Vines-Bright likewise are listed together at a starting wide-receiver spot in another battle involving a first-year player.

At tight end, sophomore Decker DeGraaf and senior Quentin Moore remain in contention, with Moore trying to reclaim the starting role he held a year ago until suffering a season-ending knee injury in the opener against Weber State.

On defense, senior Zach Durfee and junior Isaiah Ward are listed as candidates for the same edge rusher role after they started the 2024 season opener opposite each other on the edge.

John Mills show his mobility during a UW spring drill.
John Mills show his mobility during a UW spring drill. | Skylar Lin Visuals

The 6-foot-6, 320-pound Mills is attempting to become the first true freshman to start on the UW offensive line since Nick Harris in 2016. Harris opened four midseason games that season, two each at right guard and left guard, before eventually becoming a two-time, first-team All-Pac-12 center. 

The 6-foot, 190-pound Evans, who started six games for Penn State last season, is trying to stay ahead of the 6-foot-1, 200-pound Vines-Bright, who was a UW Spring Game standout with 8 catches for 131 yards and touchdown.

The Huskies haven't started a true freshman wide receiver since Rome Odunze and Jalen McMillan were pushed into emergency service against Stanford in 2020 because the COVID pandemic had left the usual starters unable to play.

At tight end, the 6-foot-4, 260-pound Moore lasted just a quarter and a half during the 2024 opener before catching a pass and taking a blindside hit on the knee from a Weber State player running off the sideline to make the tackle. The 6-foot-3, 245-pound DeGraaf wound up starting five games as a freshman in two tight-end lineups.

At the still unsettled edge position, the 6-foot-5, 256-pound Durfee is coming back from season-ending turf toe injuries that limited him to six game appearances and three starts in 2024. The 6-foot-5, 235-pound Ward, a six-game UW starter last year while appearing in all 13 games, is coming off a fall camp ankle injury.

Durfee enters the Colorado State game as one of six UW team captains.

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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