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Inside The Huskies

Durfee Overcomes All Obstacles To Become NFL Draft Pick

The Husky edge rusher will join one of the Florida franchises with a lot of promise.
Dan Raley|
Zach Durfee is always looking to wrap up on someone.
Zach Durfee is always looking to wrap up on someone. | Dave Sizer photo

Since arriving in Montlake three years ago, Zach Durfee, with his combination of size, speed and strength, resembled an NFL player.

His University of Washington football coaches intimated as much. His teammates seconded the motion. The edge rusher believed it to be true, too.

Yet someone or something always got in his way.

The NCAA. An elbow injury. Double turf toe. Another elbow mishap.

On Saturday, however, the chiseled 6-foot-5, 256-pound Durfee from Dawson, Minnesota, cleared a lot of personal hurdles by getting selected in the seventh round of the NFL Draft by the Jacksonville Jaguars.

He went to the Florida franchise on the 17th pick of the final round, as the 233rd player taken overall. He was the seventh Husky player selected in this draft, and fifth on Saturday.

From a small town of 1,466 huddled nearly 140 miles west of Minneapolis, he's living a dream shared by everyone back home.

"Obviously, I thought it would go a little smoother without sitting out a year and the injuries, but that's part of the game," Durfee said. "I learned a lot about myself through that stuff. I'm just blessed and thankful for it. It's a pretty cool journey, especially for my family where I came from. It's like really cool for everyone to think how cool I am, I guess."

He checks out of college football with 53 tackles, including 8.5 tackles for loss and 6.5 sacks, plus 3 pass break-ups and a forced fumble.

Zach Durfee stares down the Weber State quarterback.
Zach Durfee stares down the Weber State quarterback. | Skylar Lin Visuals

He was brought to the UW by Kalen DeBoer from the University of Sioux Falls, where DeBoer had coached and played, and was tipped off to the budding edge rusher who had 11 sacks as a redshirt freshman.

Yet Durfee sat out most of the 2023 run to the College Football Playoff national championship game because of an archaic NCAA transfer rule that hardly exists anymore.

Becoming eligible in the postseason, he appeared only in the Sugar Bowl and CFP semifinals against Texas that season. The coaches couldn't wait to get him on the field.

"Genetically, he's maybe the best in the room just by who can run the fastest, who can jump the highest, who's the strongest, you know what I mean," said Eric Schmidt, then the Huskies' edge-rusher coach. "I think he might be pound for pound that guy."

Getting his big chance to play in 2024, Durfee was hurt in the second game and his health steadily declined thereafter. He played in just six outings, some of them barely at all, and started three times.

Finally, he opened 10 games this past fall, in and around an elbow injury he suffered against Ohio State, showed what he could do.

For all of the interruptions, Durfee started just 13 games in his time at the UW, which amounts to one full season, but it apparently was enough to get the Jaguars interested in him.

He's one of those guys who might be a much better NFL player than he was on the college level.

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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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