Inside The Huskies

UW Offers Arizona DB and Another Son of NFL Great

Santana Wilson's dad played a dozen years as an Arizona Cardinals safety.
Dan Raley|
UW Offers Arizona DB and Another Son of NFL Great
UW Offers Arizona DB and Another Son of NFL Great

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Washington Huskies

He's still has another high school football season to play, but cornerback Santana Wilson already has NFL scouts looking at him. OK, one scout.

A junior from Desert Mountain High School in Scottsdale, Arizona, this 6-foot, 180-pound Class of 2024 prospect is the son of Adrian Wilson.

As in the five-time Pro Bowl safety over 12 seasons with the Arizona Cardinals.

As in the regional scout for the Phoenix-area franchise, later the director of pro scouting and more recently the vice president of pro scouting, all for the Cardinals. 

Yet at this point, this well-connected dad really can't do much more for Santana Wilson than give him a ready sounding board as the talented teenager navigates his way through the complexities of the recruiting world.  

On Wednesday, the University of Washington coaching staff offered Wilson — whose first name likewise is Adrian but goes by his middle name Santana — a football scholarship, his 13th as his recruiting begins to take off.

Wilson is the second son of an NFL great who lives and plays in the Phoenix suburbs to receive a Husky scholarship offer, joining safety Kennedy Urlacher from Chandler High and the Class of 2024, and he's the offspring of former Chicago Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher.

The older Adrian Wilson emerged as a standout defensive back for North Carolina State and then a 2001 third-round draft pick for the Cardinals, enjoying a highly decorated career in the desert.

A proven playmaker, Wilson started 162 of the 181 NFL games in which he appeared, intercepted 27 passes and scored four defensive touchdowns, two on pass thefts and on a pair of fumbles returns.

Young Santana similarly brings big-play potential. For Desert Mountain in 2021, the then-sophomore helped his team post a 17-8 victory over Sunrise Mountain in the semifinals of the 5A state playoffs with a pair of key turnovers. He returned a blocked field goal 75 yards for a score and intercepted a pass and took it 40 yards before he was caught.

This Wilson, who has 4.46-second speed over 40 yards, also holds other offers from Arizona, Arizona State, BYU, California, Kansas, Kansas State, Oregon and, of course, North Carolina State.

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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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