Inside The Huskies

Roebuck Third UW Player to Receive Freshman All-American Honors

He joins John Mills and Rylon Allen-Dillard as first-year Husky players singled out.
Dan Raley|
Freshmen Dezmen Roebuck finished second in receptions for the UW with 42.
Freshmen Dezmen Roebuck finished second in receptions for the UW with 42. | Dave Sizer photo

Wide receiver Dezmen Roebuck upped the list of Freshman All-Americans to three for the University of Washington football team with his inclusion on The Athletic's ranking of the college game's top first-year players.

The 5-foot-11, 180-pound pass-catcher from Marana, Arizona, was saluted on this team along with Husky teammate John Mills, with the 6-foot-6, 342-pound offensive guard from San Francisco picking up his fourth Freshman All-American accolade.

Mills previously was rewarded for his first-year play by 247Sports, On3 and Pro Football Focus.

UW safety Rylon Dillard-Allen, similar to Mills, earlier received Freshman All-American honors from PFF.

All of which goes to validate the Huskies' 28-player freshman class this past season as one of the best nationally, if not in school annals.

The Huskies used 21 one of these newcomers in games this season, including 19 in last weekend's LA Bowl alone, which was won by the UW 38-10 over Boise State. Six of them started at times during the fall.

Roebuck finished with 42 catches for 560 yards and 7 touchdowns, all numbers that ranked him second on the team and were exceeded only by junior Denzel Boston, who caught 62 balls for 862 yards and 11 scores.

Dezmen Roebuck comes up firing after a play against Rutgers.
Dezmen Roebuck comes up firing after a play against Rutgers. | Dave Sizer photo

An immediate contributor, Roebuck played in all 13 Husky games and started 10 times, which was second in game-opening assignments among the Montlake freshmen only to Mills, who started 11 outings.

Roebuck regularly turned up in the end zone. He caught a 47-yard scoring pass against UC Davis, a 34-yarder at Maryland, a pair of 13-yard TD receptions against Illinois, a 2-yard TD throw against Purdue, an 18-yarder at UCLA and he closed out his point-producing efforts with a 6-yard TD grab in the LA Bowl against Boise State.

Lightly recruited from a small town near Tucson, Arizona, Roebuck didn't arrive in Seattle until fall camp but showed almost immediately that he belonged in the thick of things.

He demonstrated hands that could flag down just about any pass that came in his vicinity. It was almost uncanny how good he was and had so few recruiting offers to go with his talent.

UW coach Jedd Fisch had the advantage of coaching at the University of Arizona and seeing Roebuck repeatedly come to campus unsolicited for 7-on-7 events and wowed people with his high-level ability to catch the football.

Everyone knows about this kid now, especially after The Athletic included him among their two teams of the nation's best freshmen.

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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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