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Gordon Keeps Pace with McDuffie in NFL Draft Regard

Both are considered first-rounders in the latest talent dispersal assessments.
Dan Raley|
Gordon Keeps Pace with McDuffie in NFL Draft Regard
Gordon Keeps Pace with McDuffie in NFL Draft Regard

People will look back at the 2021 University of Washington football team some day and want a full investigation.

They'll want to know why the Huskies went 4-8 with Kyler Gordon and Trent McDuffie as the starting cornerbacks.

They'll demand answers for this team tanking with a pair of first-team All-Pac-12 selections roaming the secondary.

This might happen as soon as a day or two following April's NFL draft when Gordon and McDuffie very well could both be taken in the first round.

Outside of maybe Alabama, two players going among the first 32 picks while playing the same position just doesn't happen.

Daniel Jeremiah of NFL Network thinks it will. 

The analyst has McDuffie going with the 10th overall pick to the New York Jets and Gordon not far behind ending up as the No. 27 selection to the Buffalo Bills.

While they're splitting up after playing side by side or competing for the same starting spot, at least these former Husky corners might end up in New York state together. 

In making his draft call on Gordon, Jeremiah had this to offer in his player assessment:

"The Bills' roster is in excellent shape. They can sit and take the best player available. Gordon has size, length and ball skills. He'd make a ton of plays behind Buffalo's defensive front."

Pro Football Focus unearthed this gem of a stat that the 6-foot, 200-pound Gordon actually threw what equates to a football no-hitter: He played 722 snaps at the UW without permitting a touchdown pass over him.

Todd McShay of ESPN is slowly coming around on Gordon, initially calling him a second-round pick. Ah, but players with exceptional cornerback skills don't last past Thursday's opening round and McShay is well aware of that.

At least McShay knows the Husky history of providing NFL-ready defensive backs. 

This national analyst should have stopped by the UW in 2019 and watched Gordon start the first four games of the season at corner as a redshirt freshman before giving way to a hard-charging Trent McDuffie, then a true freshman. The competition was legendary stuff.

People might ask for an investigation into that situation, too, wanting to know how McDuffie and Gordon ended up going head to head rather always playing side by side.

The NFL draft will be held near Las Vegas, in Paradise, Nevada, and sort things out on April 28-30.

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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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