Huskies Offer Tacoma OT Who Witnessed UW 2021 Implosion
A much younger and thinner Marquise Thorpe-Taylor stood in Husky Stadium, all bundled up, posing for a pregame photo on a turbulent, fateful day.
It was Nov. 6, 2021.
For those who have lost sight of that forgettable milestone, it was the moment when University of Washington football came crashing down.
Thorpe-Taylor was among the recruits that day who saw the Huskies lose to Oregon in the rain, coach Jimmy Lake get suspended and ultimately fired after shoving one of his players on national TV, and the program have to painstakingly start over and rebuild everything.
The coaching staff, roster, culture, commitment, recruiting priorities.
On Saturday, the UW and Thorpe-Taylor, an offensive tackle for Tacoma's Mount Tahoma High School and the Class of 2024 reconnected when the Huskies made a scholarship offer to the big Thunderbird, his eighth overall.
Thorpe-Taylor is 6-foot-6 and 315 pounds now, considerably more massive than when he occupied that West end zone in Montlake before kickoff.
His Mount Tahoma basketball highlight videos show him with a thick lower trunk, which is ideal for a promising college football offensive lineman in moving others out of the way. The reels also revealed Thorpe-Taylor possessing a certain level of athleticism sure to get football recruiters enthused, with him making nimble moves inside and dropping in a variety of left-handed shots from around the key.
Others have taken notice of the possibilities that Thorpe-Taylor presents. Last May, he received his first scholarship offer from Arizona — while he was taking an unofficial visit and posing for uniform publicity shots at Oklahoma.
He's also fielded offers from USC, Oregon, Washington State, BYU, Colorado State and Nevada.
Thorpe-Taylor comes from an inner-city Tacoma school that was once a football powerhouse and a state champion, serving up players such as running back Bobby Moore, who ended up at Oregon and was better known in the NFL as Ahmad Rashad, plus cornerback Ray Horton, linebacker Ken Driscoll and running back Mike Vindivich, who were all Huskies.
While Thorpe-Taylor played for a 4-6 Mount Tahoma team trying to reclaim some of that glorious past, he surely knows the UW directed by Kalen DeBoer's coaching staff is making the same push and quite a ways farther down the road.
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