Goforth Could Give UW Championship Hopes a Forward Push
It's shortly after 8 a.m. and Ralen Goforth walks into Dempsey Indoor for spring football practice and lets out a howl.
After four seasons at USC, he needed a change of linebacker scenery, considered leaving the Pac-12 altogether, but took a recruiting trip to Montlake and liked everything he encountered about Kalen DeBoer's University of Washington football program.
The culture. The vibe. The togetherness of all of those players who delayed their pro careers when they really didn't have to.
"I've always thought of the U-Dub as that quiet darkhorse up north," Goforth said. "They might not get the biggest media coverage on a nationwide platform, in my opinion, but this is the program that straps their boots on, puts their hardhats on and goes to work each and every day."
The thickly built Goforth, who carries a 6-foot-2, 236-pound frame, could have been a Husky coming out of SoCal high school football powerhouse St. John Bosco, where he teamed with a cornerback named Trent McDuffie.
He had then-UW coaches Chris Petersen, Jimmy Lake and Bob Gregory over to his Los Angeles-area house to recruit him and everyone sat down for a home-cooked meal prepared by his mother. Yet he picked the Trojans.
As a USC freshman in 2019, Goforth encountered the Huskies once more in Seattle, in the only time they popped up on the schedule in his time there, and he and his teammates went home with a 28-14 loss. That day, he admired their fortitude while he literally froze in Husky Stadium.
"I was telling the guys, the last time I was up here I just remember it was so cold," he said. "We're all freezing on our sideline and I just looked across the field and everybody was just standing there so calm, cool and collected, like the cold wasn't fazing them."
He joined the UW after starting 17 of 40 games for the Trojans and piling up 149 career tackles. Similar to his new teammates, he experienced an 11-3 turnaround last season under a new coach in Lincoln Riley after suffering through a 4-8 downturn in 2021.
Still, before finally agreeing to set some roots in Montlake, he had to check with a trusted source. He called Shaq Thompson, the former Husky linebacker turned NFL mainstay, who he described as a close family friend, and asked for his advice.
"I told him what I wanted out of this year, in terms of what I wanted to do," Goforth said. "He just said, 'You just put your head down and work, and everything would fall into place.' "
So here he is at the UW, dealing with that cold weather that's lingered a big too long this spring. He's joined an ultra competitive position area that involves Edefuan Ulofoshio, a 2020 second-team All-Pac-12 selection and once called the nation's leading returning linebacker; Alphonzo Tuputala, one of just two UW defensive players to start all 13 games last year; and Carson Bruener, who has on his resume a 16-tackle, 1.5-sack outing and resulting Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Week reward in 2021.
Goforth not only brings big-hitter skills, but he's a cerebral type who's very passionate about what he does. He said the Husky brotherhood situation fits "his morals." And whereas he'll enter one practice situation with a vocal outburst, this newcomer also will come out of the stadium tunnel, drop down on one knee, bow his head and presumably say a long prayer, pointing to the sky when he's done.
"[I'm here] mainly to help this program win a national title, win a Pac-12 title," Goforth said. "I see these great guys, and not just great football players but great human beings on this team, who came back. You've got [Michael] Penix, got Troy [Fautanu], got Eddie. You've got a gang of guys who could have declared and could have left, and went pretty good in the draft.
"But they decided to come back, and I could see why they came back."
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