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Inside The Huskies

Carson Bruener Matches His Father as Husky Captain

The linebacker is one of six UW players who will handle these duties this season.
Dan Raley|
Huskies linebacker Carson Bruener gets ready to face Michigan in the College Football Playoff national championship game at NRG Stadium in Houston.
Huskies linebacker Carson Bruener gets ready to face Michigan in the College Football Playoff national championship game at NRG Stadium in Houston. | Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

The University of Washington football team on Monday night revealed its six captains for the coming season, with one of them -- senior linebacker Carson Bruener -- accepting this Husky reward exactly 30 years after his father was similarly decorated.

Presumably voted in by their teammates, the captains consist of starting linebackers Alphonzo Tuputala and Bruener, veteran running back Cam Davis and seasoned safety Kam Fabiculanan, new quarterback Will Rogers and reliable kicker Grady Gross.

Tuputala, Davis and Fabiculanan are each sixth-year seniors who have spent their entire careers in Montlake; Rogers, the Mississippi State transfer, and Bruener are fifth-year seniors; and Gross is a junior.

With just four captains permitted on the field for the pregame coin flip with the officials, they'll no doubt alternate these duties, which is what the 2022 Huskies did.

Bruener, after spending the past two seasons as a reserve for Kalen DeBoer's staff, appears ready to go out with a splash in his final season with the Huskies and Jedd Fisch's coaches -- he's not only become a starter and a captain, but he earlier turned up on the watch list for the Butkus Award, which is an accolade given to the nation's top linebacker.

The UW captaincy has to be a sentimental moment for the 6-foot-2, 226-pound defender from Woodinville, Washington. His father Mark, a Husky tight end in 1991-94 and later a 14-year NFL player, was a captain as a senior along with running back Napolean Kaufman, inside linebacker David Kilpatrick and outside linebacker Donovan Schmidt,

For the latest UW football and basketball news, go to si.com/college/washington

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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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