RealDawg.com continues its look at the 2022 football season for the Washington Huskies. We’ve already looked at the offensive side of the ball and have begun to dig into the defensive unit. First we looked at how Washington’s defensive line fared against the rush. Now let’s recap the 2022 linebacking corps.
The linebacker unit has been thin at the University of Washington in recent memory. Going back to the end of the Chris Petersen era the Huskies either whiffed on the top players in recruiting classes or the ones they got didn’t pan out and exited the program. In this expectation versus reality, we’re going to only be looking at Washington’s inside linebacking crew and not the outside linebackers.
After Benn Burr-Kervin left for the NFL, the Huskies struggled early in 2019 to find the right fit. Kyler Manu and Brandon Wellington had the first shot but struggled to continue the expectations set by Burr-Kervin and the combination of Azeem Victor and Keishawn Bierria.
The saving grace for the previous two coaching staffs is Edefuan Ulofoshio. Ulofoshio was a walk-on out of Bishop Gorman in Las Vegas who exploded onto the scene with two forced fumbles against OSU in 2018. Along the way, he became an All-American. The ceiling was sky-high before a season-ending injury sidelined him for the 2021 season. At one point in time, he was tabbed as a possible NFL draft pick.
In 2021 the Huskies had two top 20 linebackers in Carson Bruener and Jacob Sirmon. The duo combined for 161 stops.
Carson Bruner brought with him an impressive Football IQ and knack for taking great routes to the ball-carriers but was not projected to be a contributor until later in his development. Instead, he became a major contributor in 2021 playing fundamental football and creating big plays, finishing 18th in the conference with 71 total tackles.
Further up the list was Jackson Sirmon, at fifth with 90 tackles. His departure to play for his dad at Cal left a gaping hole in the middle of Washington’s defense. In Berkley, he finished 3rd in the conference in total tackles with 104.
Perhaps an even bigger hole was left by the injured Ulofoshio. Before he went down in game 6 of the 2021 season with an injury Ulofoshio had 51 tackles. However, he was averaging 11.25 tackles in four Power 5. Extrapolating that over the final six games 67.5, which would have given him 107.5 tackles that season. That would have put him fifth in total tackles but first in the conference in tackles per game.
Expectation: Coming into the season the staff knew that Ulofoshio was not going to be available so they dipped into the Transfer Portal and grabbed Cam Bright from Pitt and Kris Moll from Alabama-Birmingham. Even with the influx of talent and the emergence of Bruner as a playmaker in 2021, many questioned if this group could come close to the expectations of a linebacker room at UW under Chris Petersen.
Bright’s freakish athleticism and Moll’s nose for the ball were much-needed 1-year additions. Many felt the ceiling was high for those two but questioned how they’d fair in a passing conference.
Entering Fall Camp, the two deeps were thought to be Bright and Moll with Bruener and 4-star Daniel Heimuli rotating in. In short, the expectation was not high for this thin group. In fact, given that the position group was being remade from outside and a new scheme it was very difficult to project how good or bad this position group would be.
Reality: A plot-twist happened in Fall Camp as Alphonzo Tuputala made it impossible for the coaches to keep him off of the field. He emerged as the starter next to Bright when the season started. The rotation also included Bruner and Moll. Throughout the season all four players made big-time plays in key moments of games. Bright and Moll showed good speed sideline to sideline, Bruner was very effective on all downs, and Tupatala was strong in the run game helping them bring some pride to the rush defense that was missing in 2021.
Tuputala and Bright finished 28th and 35th in the conference, with 71 and 60 total tackles, respectively. Alex Cook actually led the Huskies with 82 tackles, 13th in the Pac-12.
Ulofoshio appeared in the final four games of the season. His most memorable was the stop on the ill-advised 4th down call against Oregon when he stopped Noah Whittington to set up the game-winning field goal.
As we noted in our look at the defensive line, Washington had the best run defense in 2022, and that’s without Ulofosio for a big chunk of the season, and reworking the linebacking corps. There were some notable lapses where the LB unit struggled to tackle in the open field, but the players were usually well-positioned to make the stop. In reality, the linebacking crew was better than expected, especially helping in run support.
Expectation: C
Reality: B
