Inside The Huskies

Kirkland, Ulofoshio Earn Preseason All-American Recognition

The Husky junior left tackle and sophomore inside linebacker draw second-team status.
Dan Raley|
Kirkland, Ulofoshio Earn Preseason All-American Recognition
Kirkland, Ulofoshio Earn Preseason All-American Recognition

People more and more are noticing two of the hardest working University of Washington football players, one on each side of the ball.

On Thursday, the Walter Camp Football Foundation singled out Husky left tackle Jaxson Kirkland and inside linebacker Edefuan Ulofoshio as second-team All-America selections. You can access the Camp team here. 

Earlier, the 6-foot-7, 310-pound Kirkland from Portland, Oregon, received second-team All-America honors from Athlon Sports magazine.

These two go to show you how seriously to take the all-mighty recruiting rankings. 

Kirkland was a supposed 3-star player whom the Huskies initially passed on in favor of trying to sign local lineman, Foster Sarell, deemed a 5-star who went with Stanford and is now a Baltimore Ravens rookie. 

While the 6-foot-6, 322-pound Sarell was a nice player, he went undrafted and had to sign as an NFL free agent. Kirkland, returning for a fifth season at the UW, has been mentioned as a possible first-round pick, going as high as 10th in the next draft.

Kirkland, reclassified as a junior because of the pandemic season freebie, recently graduated from the UW with a 3.6 grade point average. It's safe to say he'll be moving on following this season. 

Then there's Ulofoshio.

Camp has him among it second-team linebackers, this coming after Pro Football Focus earlier named the Las Vegas product as the nation's top returning linebacker. 

Not bad for a walk-on who had scholarship offers only from second-tier schools Northern Arizona and Robert Morris. 

The 6-foot-1, 240-pound Ulofoshio went from walk-on to starter at the end of his redshirt freshman season to scholarship recipient before last season to full-fledged defensive leader. 

He's been reclassified as a sophomore following the pandemic free season. Imagine having him for three more seasons. Similar to Kirkland, he's also a serious student, taking pre-med classes.

While Kirkland and Ulofoshio are deserving recipients of all this national attention, one has to wonder what it's going to take for now junior tight end Cade Otton and sophomore cornerback Trent McDuffie to get noticed. 

Their credentials are as luminous as any at their positions, with McDuffie already showing up on an NFL mock draft as the 16th overall pick. 

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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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