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How a Sioux Falls Player Ended Up with the Huskies

Zach Durfee was a high school quarterback turned into an aggressive edge rusher.
Dan Raley|
How a Sioux Falls Player Ended Up with the Huskies
How a Sioux Falls Player Ended Up with the Huskies

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Washington Huskies

Courtney Morgan, University of Washington football director of player personnel, intently studied the video, followed by edge-rusher coach Eric Schmidt and co-defensive coordinator Chuck Morrell, before the game footage ended up with head coach Kalen DeBoer.

What everyone, one after the other, saw was a player in purple jersey No. 90 with steam coming out of his ears who terrorized opposing backfields.

This revved-up defender showed off all sorts of spin moves, speed rushes, the ability to split a double-team and the audacity to rip off a quarterback's helmet.

No, the UW football staff wasn't watching a grainy, three-decade-old highlight reel of Steve Emtman putting the Huskies on his back and carrying them to a 1991 co-national championship.

What DeBoer and Company viewed with considerable interest was edge rusher Zach Durfee from NCAA Division II University of Sioux Falls — DeBoer's alma mater and first coaching stop — make a strong case for playing up two levels of college football.

"Courtney Morgan actually was the one that, once [Durfee] went in, kind of alerted me, as well as Coach Schmidt, that he's someone we certainly should take a look at," DeBoer said. "Once we popped on the film, I agreed. He's just got an extra level of burst."

Of the 26 names the UW recently signed from the high-school, junior-college and transfer-portal ranks, the 6-foot-5, 250-pound Durfee presented the most mystery and intrigue among these new faces because of his unconventional football journey.

He was a quarterback from Dawson-Boyd High School in Dawson, Minnesota, who was forced to write a letter to Sioux Falls to generate recruiting interest in himself.

However, the school known as USF initially envisioned Durfee as a tight end, but it brought him onto campus, saw the speed, bulked him up over a redshirt year and turned him into an edge rusher. And then wished him luck as he sought a greater challenge.

"He just didn't have the opportunity to go to a place at the level he deserves," DeBoer said.

Durfee wasn't heavily recruited out of high school because of the game cancellations and limitations on campus visits and personal contact created by the COVID pandemic. He also suffered an injury in high school and was still injured as a college freshman. 

DeBoer never saw the big kid play, only heard his name mentioned, as he kept up on his old school this past season.

"There were some things that were working against him," the UW coach said of the recruiting process that finally swung Durfee's way with the Huskies. "It's a thing where you kind of understand their story. The second part is just trusting your evaluation."

For an 8-3 team, Durfee was a redshirt freshman sensation with 11.5 sacks, earning first-team Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference honors (NSIC). He finished with 28 tackles, 17 going for tackles for loss.

DeBoer's staff made sure to ask all of the right questions as they dug into the player's background and envisioned his potential. He seemed to check off all the boxes.

"I think our staff does a phenomenal job of not just pulling up who has the most stars and starting there," the UW coach said. "They really do a good job of studying film and getting into the details and figuring out what is this body type this person has now and what could it be? Is he tapped out on his speed? What are other little variables? What's the makeup? What's the attitude? Does this guy give effort?"

Durfee, who has three seasons of college football eligibility remaining, chose the UW over Minnesota, Iowa State, North Dakota State and North Dakota.

He'll join a deeply talented Husky position group that includes likely All-America candidate Bralen Trice, who was a first-team All-Pac-12 selection and the Alamo Bowl defensive player of the game; Zion Tupola-Fetui, previously a 2020 first-team, all-conference choice; Sav'ell Smalls, a one-time 5-star recruit; the top incoming prospect Anthony James, a Texan originally committed to Texas A&M, and others.

More and more teams seem to acknowledge the work the Huskies put into identifying football talent and have been trying to take advantage. Most notably, Ohio State came in late on another Husky commit from South Dakota, quarterback Lincoln Kienholz, and spirited him away from DeBoer's recruiting staff.

"I think we do a really good job," DeBoer said. "I think a lot of people, if you follow recruiting over the course of the year, trust our evaluations, as well."

Durfee, if he works out as expected, could build a lot more of that.

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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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