Inside The Huskies

Huskies Look to Minnesota For Another D-Lineman

Nehemiah Ombati could follow Elinneus Davis' lead and leave the Gopher State for the UW.
Dan Raley|
Nemehiah Ombati shares a holiday recruiting visit with Florida State.
Nemehiah Ombati shares a holiday recruiting visit with Florida State. | Ombati

University of Washington football recruiters have been down this road before -- one that crosses the gentle Minnesota landscape, leads away from the heavily populated areas, and ends at the doorstep of a large human being who tackles people.

Three years ago, this was Elinneus Davis, a defensive tackle who emerged from Moorhead, Minnesota, which is closer to Fargo, North Dakota, than anywhere else.

The 6-foot-3, 317-pound Davis signed with Kalen DeBoer's staff, has played in 25 games after redshirting and was a 10-game starter as a sophomore last fall, which means he's been a successful Midwest find.

The UW's latest target is Nehemiah Ombati, a 4-star D-Line prospect from Shakopee, Minnesota, which is 25 miles west of Minneapolis, who received a Husky scholarship offer earlier this week.

What's similar is Ombati holds a dozen offers, mostly from Midwest schools, in and around the Gopher State, with the UW the outlier from the West Coast, which is what Davis had.

What's different is the 6-foot-3, 275-pound Ombati has more of a roughhewn physical look to him, with huge forearms and often a sneer.

This runs in contrast to Davis, who was somewhat of a choirboy when he got on an airplane for the first time and took a recruiting trip to Seattle.

Nehemiah Ombati gets in a stance for Shakopee High.
Nehemiah Ombati gets in a stance for Shakopee High. | Ombati

Ombati holds 14 scholarship offers, which include Iowa, Kansas, Kansas State, Minnesota, Nebraska, Wisconsin and all of the Dakotas, North Dakota, North Dakota State and South Dakota State.

Different from Davis, he began branching out with offers this week, adding the Boston College and Virginia Tech to the UW proposal.

Nehemiah Ombati had 70 tackles for Shakopee High as a junior.
Nehemiah Ombati had 70 tackles for Shakopee High as a junior. | Ombati

Once leaning to his home state school, Ombati publicly voiced his displeasure when the Gophers in early December fired defensive-line coach Dennis Dottin-Carter, with whom he had built a close recruiting relationship.

For a 6-4 Shakopee team, Ombati comes off a junior season in which he appeared in nine games and collected 70 tackles, which included 6 tackles for loss and 1.5 sacks, and forced a pair of fumbles.

Defensive tackle remains a somewhat unfilled position for the Huskies, who brought in a pair of players this past season as freshmen, Caleb Smith and Dominic Macon, and they headed for the transfer portal as soon as it opened.

Meantime, six other D-linemen either graduated or transferred following this past season, with Bryce Butler ending up at Texas Tech and Jayvon Parker signing with Maryland.

Minnesota has been good to the UW in ways other than Elinneus Davis, too, with edge rusher Zach Durfee coming from Dawson by way of transfer from Sioux Falls to the UW.

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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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