Huskies' Grady Gross Took a Road Trip That Had More Good Than Bad
Grady Gross sent his first University of Washington kickoff sailing high end over end to the UCLA 3 yard line, where the Bruins' Kazmeir Allen gathered it in and started up the right sideline.
The speedy kick returner, who'd gone the distance before, veered to the left before spotting an open lane and sharply cutting back right.
Allen shifted into overdrive as he zipped past Husky defenders and saw nothing between him and the goal line.
However, once he crossed the 34, Allen was tripped off his feet by a soccer-style sliding Gross, who stuck out a foot and brought down the guy with the football.
Two flags were thrown immediately and signaled an obvious infraction on the otherwise industrious true freshman and walk-on player from Scottsdale, Arizona, who won the UW kickoff job.
Standing on the sideline, Husky coach Kalen DeBoer wasn't particularly thrilled by what he just saw, thinking, "I at first was, 'Really? Like we needed to do that?' "
Much later, DeBoer offered another opinion on the tripping play.
"But then watching the film, we really needed to do that," the coach said.
The 5-foot-11, 213-pound Gross came to the UW from Horizon High School, which answers to the Huskies and won the 5A state championship last year. And, yes, he played soccer at the suburban Phoenix school.
It's unclear if the young kicker had to work off his penalty in a manner in which fellow teammates do daily, which is to crawl across the field while carrying a pair of footballs, and not as easy as it looks.
No doubt, Gross will be subjected to some additional Husky tackling drills. Yet his initial reaction cost the UW just 15 yards, not six points.
"That was his instinct, obviously not the right one," DeBoer said of the soccer slide, "but we needed to get the guy down somehow."
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