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New UW Staff Does What Old One Resisted — Offers Gabarri Johnson

The Lincoln High School quarterback finally draws Husky interest.
Dan Raley|
New UW Staff Does What Old One Resisted — Offers Gabarri Johnson
New UW Staff Does What Old One Resisted — Offers Gabarri Johnson

Gabarri Johnson seemed destined to become the next Jon Kitna.

That would be a Lincoln High School quarterback in Tacoma with a strong arm and great leadership abilities who couldn't draw any recruiting interest from the University of Washington.

Kitna, of course, went on to win an NAIA national championship with Central Washington University and spend parts of 14 seasons in the NFL with the Seattle Seahawks, Cincinnati Bengals and Dallas Cowboys.

As for the dual-threat Johnson, the Huskies won't be making that same mistake twice. Whether they land the Class of 2023 recruit or not, it won't be for lack of trying.

Several UW coaching staffs later following the Kitna era, Kalen DeBoer's recruiters extended a scholarship offer to Johnson on Friday, becoming his eighth college pursuer.

While Kitna is a Texas high school football coach now, on his fourth school after first coaching at Lincoln, Johnson is a highly mobile quarterback who was responsible for 43 touchdowns running and passing last fall for a 7-3 Abes football team.

Standing in the pocket, he completed more than 60 percent of his passes for 2,222 yards and 28 scores. Getting out and running, he picked up another 737 yards and supplied a team-best 15 TDs.

Besides the UW, Johnson holds scholarship offers from Oregon, Oregon State, Arizona State, Arkansas, Florida Atlantic, Utah and Washington State. 

Johnson, of course, is teammates at Lincoln High with 5-star edge rusher Jayden Wayne, who can play for any program in the country and just recently pared his master list from 37 to 11. 

The UW and Oregon are the only crossover schools for Johnson and Wayne that would enable them to become football teammates once more.

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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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