Inside The Huskies

Esteen 'Blames' Himself for Becoming 6th-year Husky

The veteran safety bids for starting job, yet admits he's been around too long.
Dan Raley|
Makell Esteen waits for his turn in a UW spring drill.
Makell Esteen waits for his turn in a UW spring drill. | Skylar Lin Visuals

As a senior safety for the University of Washington football team, Makell Esteen wears 24 as his jersey of choice.

The number 6, however, is a digit he could do without.

He's one of a half-dozen Huskies now playing a sixth year of college football and he's not really proud of that fact.

"I just feel it's my fault, it's my fault; very honestly, my fault," Esteen said of extending his UW career more than he envisioned. "I came to college and there's COVID and what's that? I didn't take college serious."

That includes football, to a degree.

With the pandemic raging, Esteen arrived as a freshman in 2020 to play for Jimmy Lake's first UW football team and tried to make inroads at both wide receiver and safety rather than concentrate on one position.

As a matter of trivia, Esteen is the only guy who remains on the UW football roster who played in a game during that COVID-shortened schedule, making an appearance against Arizona so long ago it was before Jedd Fisch became the Wildcats coach.

In his second season in Montlake, the 6-foot-1, 205-pound defensive back from Hawthorne, California, was injured and lost out on an entire year.

For the past three seasons, Esteen has moved himself into position to play and even start. He's appeared in 33 Husky games over his career and opened seven of them. For his career, he 70 tackles, 6 pass break-ups and 3 interceptions.

In fall camp that opens Wednesday, he finds himself in a fairly healthy competition for a starting safety job with transfer portal newcomers in Florida International's CJ Christian and Northern Arizona's Alex McLaughlin, plus holdover sophomore Vince Holmes, players all fairly interchangeable as free or strong safeties.

Husky safety Makell Esteen makes a tackle at Oregon.
Husky safety Makell Esteen makes a tackle at Oregon. | Skylar Lin Visuals

Time's not running out on Esteen, it's just starting to pile up.

He's the last of a dying breed, though the accomplishments of that group tend to show that these Huskies stayed healthy enough to play college football for six years.

Esteen does this tour of duty along with fellow graybeards in offensive guard Geirean Hatchett, offensive tackle Carver Willis, defensive lineman Logan Sagapolu, linebacker Anthony Ward and tight end Quentin Moore.

"It's time for me," Esteen said, "to put everything together."

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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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