Inside The Huskies

Huskies Land on Early List for 2027 Florida Running Back

Tranard Roberts has a host of suitors even with a small sample of high school carries.
Dan Raley|
Tranard Roberts finds the end zone for IMG.
Tranard Roberts finds the end zone for IMG. | IMG

Dropping a top 10 of college football choices, running back Tranard Roberts had the University of Washington listed among an impressive array of schools.

Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Georgia Tech, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio State, Tennessee and Texas were the others to curry his favor.

Not bad for a guy who rushed just 42 times for 300 yards and 4 touchdowns for a 7-2 IMG Academy team last season.

Yet looking deeper into the 6-foot, 180-pounder, there is so much that meets the eye than a handful of stats.

Roberts is considered the No. 1 player in Florida and the No. 3 running back nationally for 2027. He's coming off a sophomore season at IMG in Bradenton in which he basically had to wait his turn to get into games and show glimpses what he can do.

Apparently everyone on that aforementioned list, including the Huskies, saw more than enough to put Roberts on a layaway plan.

His reported speed resonates with everyone -- 4.33 seconds over 40 yards.

While his touches were limited as this young back, Roberts in the latter half of the season broke off a 67-yard touchdown run to help IMG pull out a 14-13 overtime victory over East St. Louis High School on the road.

He shot up the middle and no one touched him until his teammates caught up with him in the end zone. That seemed to stamp him as a potential great one while teaming with receiver Raiden Vines-Bright, now at the UW.

Roberts played his freshman season for Williston High in the Florida town of the same name, which is south of Gainesville and the University of Florida, one of his 10 schools.

At a ninth-grader, he rushed 33 times for 409 yards and 7 scores for an 11-1 Williston team before deciding to showcase his talents at IMG in 2024.

This much is clear: with all of the hype surrounding him, Roberts needs to get more than 42 and 33 carries in a season. Let the guy run.

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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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