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Inside The Huskies

Feeling Mile High, Jonah Coleman Takes His Game To Denver

The Husky running back gets drafted in the fourth round.
Dan Raley|
Drew Azzopardi and Jonah Coleman share a Husky moment.
Drew Azzopardi and Jonah Coleman share a Husky moment. | Dave Sizer photo

Lately, Jonah Coleman has been everywhere.

The Rich Eisen Show. Hawking Buffalo Wild Wings. The Up and Adams Show. Posting a photo of himself as a youth football player.

And, on Saturday, the former University of Washington running back ended up with the Denver Broncos after he was selected with the eighth pick of the fourth round, and the 108th choice overall of the NFL Draft.

He'll head to the Rocky Mountain state and the Mile High City to advance his football career and show everyone why he was considered one of the biggest sleepers in this latest April talent dispersal.

Coleman becomes the third former Husky running back to be drafted by Denver, joining Charlie Mitchell, who went to the Broncos on the then 18th pick in 1963, and Greg Lewis, a fifth-rounder in 1991.

For much of the winter, the pros have been asking who is Jonah Coleman, and he's been trying to answer them the best he can.

"When you go in an interview, they try, you know, to mess up your mind a litlte bit," Coleman said at Husky Pro Day. "Ask some tough questions to get you to get out of character sometimes. To able to keep your cool and stick to the script is important."

Coleman leaves for the NFL following two seasons at Arizona and two more at Washington, where he showed himself to be just as productive playing for good teams at both schools and as he did for bad teams at each.

This 5-foot-9, 220-pounder originally from Stockton, California, seems tough and talented enough to succeed as a pro football player, with understated quickness, as well as a strong lower trunk that enables him to stay on his feet after taking hit after hit.

He played in a combined 50 games at his two college stops, starting 29 of them, while rushing 552 times for 3,054 yards and 34 touchdowns.

He showed himself to be a big-time player for Arizona by rushing 11 times for 179 yards at Colorado and 22 times for 143 yards at USC.

For the Huskies, he rushed 24 times for 177 yards against Colorado State and got loose against UC Davis for 5 touchdowns.

While a durable player, Coleman hurt a knee late in this past season at Wisconsin and sat out an ensuing game against Purdue, which was a big deal for him -- it was the only missed outing from his football career at any level.

If that wasn't a testament to his dedication to football, those NFL inquisitors simply haven't been paying attention.

Yet the Broncos apparently saw enough possibilities in him to invest a draft pick on him. If he misses any more football games in his career, that will be a shocker to anyone who knows him.

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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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