Inside The Huskies

As Home for Players Named Williams, UW Goes After Another

The 4-star safety from Southern California has the Huskies among his final five schools.
Dan Raley|
Jedd Fisch and the UW hosted 4-star safety Gavin Williams during spring ball last April.
Jedd Fisch and the UW hosted 4-star safety Gavin Williams during spring ball last April. | UW

If the University of Washington football team already didn't have enough players named Williams -- Demond, Rashid, Justice -- the Huskies are making a concentrated bid for yet another.

That would be Gavin Williams, a 4-star safety from Southern California, who's had everyone try to make a run at him.

He's just cut his 40 scholarships offers to five, arranging for official visits this spring to UCLA (May 15), Washington (May 29), Texas A&M (June 5), USC (June 12) and Notre Dame (June 19).

Last December, the 6-foot-1, 180-pound Williams had the Huskies among his top 10 schools and those no longer in the running for his services now are Alabama, Michigan, Ohio State, Oregon and Texas.

That rejection list alone is highly impressive, with all of them Big Ten and SEC schools.

For an 8-3 Damien High team in La Verne, California, which is located east of Los Angeles, this particular Williams comes off a reasonably productive junior season in which he finished with 63 tackles, 45 of them solo and 5 going for tackles for loss.

He also came up with a pair of interceptions, 8 pass break-ups, 3 forced fumles and a blocked field goal.

On offense for his Spartans, he caught 23 passes for 401 yards and 4 touchdowns.

In chasing this elite safety, some might wonder what the UW did and what schools such as Michigan and Oregon didn't do, and the answer is Taylor Mays.

The Huskies seem to get a lot of mileage out of the fact their safeties coach was a three-time All-America safety for USC and a six-year NFL player for three different teams. His resume seems to resonate.

The UW initially offered Williams in October 2024 when Vinnie Sunseri was the safeties coach, and then had him in for a spring football visit in April a year ago with Mays on board, and Williams posed for photos with the head guy Jedd Fisch.

The safety also took an unofficial visit during the season when the Huskies hosted Purdue and saw them put a 49-13 beating on the Boilermakers.

Considering the intense recruiting competition still involved, this Williams will be a tough get for the UW.

But the Huskies better make sure to introduce him to Demond, Rashid and Justice while he's in town again in May. They could consider themselves family and run with it.

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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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