Inside The Huskies

Huskies, Cade Otton Draw Highest National Attention Yet

The UW football team cracks another top 10, while its junior tight end is No. 1 at his position.
Dan Raley|
Huskies, Cade Otton Draw Highest National Attention Yet
Huskies, Cade Otton Draw Highest National Attention Yet

Prognosticators come at you like so many edge rushers this time of year, it's hard to stay out of their grasp. 

Preseason polls. All-America teams. Enough analytics to fill an upper deck at Husky Stadium.

Football junkies read every last bit of it, if for nothing else to see if these people have done their homework or are sadly misinformed. 

McIllece Sports, an online forecaster and subscription service not widely known, is the latest to weigh in and it holds the University of Washington football team in higher regard than any of the other so-called experts.

This outfit ranks the Huskies sixth in its national poll and chooses tight end Cade Otton as a first-team All-America selection.

For those of you scoring at home, the UW's previous top national ranking was ninth by Blue Chip Sports. The Huskies typically fall in the second 10 of a top 20.

McIllece Sports went on to forecast the college football playoff and interestingly enought had Washington and Alabama as the last two teams in the running that failed to reach the final four. 

This prediction outfit must not be Southern-based, hence its bold move of knocking the Crimson Tide out of the playoff altogether.  

As for Otton, he's the the third Husky player to receive some sort of first-team All-American attention from the experts, joining offensive tackle Jaxson Kirkland and inside linebacker Edefuan Ulofoshio, who have appeared on multiple top defensive listings so far.

All of this seems to indicate Jimmy Lake's second team might be pretty good this fall, and that he has a significant number of players who are upper-echelon combatants at the college level and presumably headed for the NFL.

Even at that, Husky cornerback Trent McDuffie remains overlooked. He might be better than all of his teammates receiving top accolades. In this day and age of NIL marketing, the sophomore seems to lack only a good publicist.

One forecasting service earlier listed McDuffie at the No. 16 overall pick in next April's draft, but he hasn't found his way onto any All-American first teams. That could change should the Huskies make a long run this season.

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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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