Inside The Huskies

Huskies Haven't Been Dismissed By Every Prognosticator

CBSsports.com actually views the UW as a formidable team in its post-spring ratings.
Dan Raley|
All eyes will be on the UW offensive line this season.
All eyes will be on the UW offensive line this season. | Skylar Lin Visuals

A year ago, the University of Washington football team and its high-profile players began showing up on every offseason poll, list of draftables, potential All-Americans, anything and everything to put on a Husky resume.

This spring, not so much.

With just two starters returning and an offensive line barely out of high school one year for the most part, the UW and its returning personnel, even after a national championship finish, have been easy to dismiss, ignore, forget.

Yet, as new Husky running back Jonah Coleman so eloquently put it after the spring game, "It's a process, man."

So after pitching a shutout with Pro Football Focus' top 10 college players at every position -- OK, Carson Bruener got an honorable mention, making him the nation's 11th best linebacker -- and failing to turn up on Joel Klatt's top 25 teams, the Huskies have found an earnest believer in Dennis Dodd at CBSSports.com.

Drum roll please: Dodd, one of the few football writers to cover all 16 national championship games, has the UW in his post-spring top 25 poll, slotted between Miami and Kansas State at No. 18.

That's a start.

Rather than look only at what the Huskies have now, in terms of those meager number of starters bandied about and looked down on, he's taken into consideration that the title run had to leave an impact, or a winning impression, on the players still on board.

His synopsis for flagging the UW as a Top 25 team again goes as follows:

18, Washington. DeBoer showed what was possible at Washington. Fisch now tries to replicate a championship run while adjusting to the Big Ten. Quarterback Will Rogers re-committed to the Huskies after coming from Mississippi State. He wasn't great in the spring game but is the only proven QB on the roster. Celebrated freshman Demond Williams Jr. is the future, though.

It should be noted of the four Pac-12 teams headed for the Big Ten, Dodd likes Oregon at No. 3 and doesn't have USC or UCLA ranked anywhere at all.

Dodd has Steve Sarkisian's usualy overrated Texas team at No. 4, Kalen DeBoer's new Alabama team fifth, Big 12 newcomer Utah at No. 11, defending national Michigan at 12 and Jedd Fisch's former Arizona team slotted 15th.

Meantime, the Huskies will continue to mine the portal for offensive linemen and add a proven player or two fetched from the store window, which no doubt will be good for more poll inclusions.

For the latest UW football and basketball news, go to si.com/college/football

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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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