On 4th down and one yard to go, in a 0-0 game in the first quarter of Washington’s game against the Ohio State Buckeyes, Husky linebacker Xe’ree Alexander met OSU running back CJ Donaldson at the line of 5-yard line, stopping him dead in his tracks.  It was 6-2 232 Donaldson versus 6-2, and 242 Alexander.

Last weekend, on 4th and 1 at the Washington 6 yard line, X marked his spot–again against Michigan’s Jordan Marshall.

That he’d even found himself on the field in Ann Arbor is an improbable journey, to say the least.

He was one of 4 newcomers at the linebacker position but was had the more prototypical linebacker size at 6-2, 232 pounds.  By the time the season started he had bulked up to 242 pounds–and a nose for the ball.

His senior season he put together a first-team all-state campaign for Kennedy Catholic, south of Seattle in Burien.  There he helped lead the Lancers to 4A State Championship Game.  That season he recorded 115 stops and scored two defensive touchdowns.

But despite the heady play he played with a heavy heart as he’d lost two close family members, his cousin and grandfather on his mother’s side.  Both had passed away.

“They meant a lot to me,” he told RealDawg.com at the time.  “I play for them.”

This past off-season, the Huskies were faced with replacing two other home-grown linebacker talents in Alponzo Tuputala and Carson Bruener who both made it onto NFL after the season.

The Huskies brought in 4 newcomers, including Alexander who transferred from UCF.  They also brought in Arizona-transfer Jacob Manu, Washington State-transfer Taariq “Buddah” Al-Uqdah, and true freshman Zaydrius Rainey-Sale.

Then Manu was held out as he recovered from off-season surgery, then he filed an eligibility lawsuit with the NCAA.  Meanwhile, Rainey-Sale was also recovering from off-season surgery, and Michigan was just his second game back.  Plus, Al-Uqdah was lost for the season to injury and the mainstays have been University of Central Florida-transfer Xe’ree Alexander and Deven Bryant.

In reality, X is why Z wasn’t rushed back to duty.

Against the Wolverines Xe’ree and Bryant finished 4th on the team in total tackles but again X marked his spot on 4th down.

While both stops should have been momentum shifts, the Washington offense wasn’t able to capitalize on either stops.

“He had 8 tackles.  He had a TFL.  He did a really good job both on special teams and on defense,” Fisch said of X’s performance in Ann Arbor.

Pro Football Focus agreed with the coach’s assessment scoring him with an 85.5, his highest rating of the season.

“He gives us the ability to rush the passer as an additional body in there, especially if Jacob comes back,” Fisch continued.  “Then we can kind of move Xe’ree to different places. I thought he did a really nice job, though. There’s a lot of good plays there.

Part of Xe’ree’s multi-tool emergence is that he’s up to 242 pounds, which came in handy taking on the blocker and then the ball carrier at the Husky 5 yard line against Michigan.

But those two stops were a preceded by two other big stops in his journey that was more than 2 years in the making.

With Kalen DeBoer at the helm for the Huskies for 2 seasons, in-state recruiting appeared to be lost in the transition between Jimmy Lake’s staff, DeBoer’s staff then also took a backseat to Transfer Portal acquisitions.

Despite it being a bumper crop for the Evergreen State, many felt that local talent went largely ignored by the new Washington staff.

“The top 20 players in the state all signed with Power 5 schools, with the exception of Alexander,” recalled RealDawg.com’s lead high school recruiting analyst Trevor Mueller.  “He had 6 offers but not one from Washington.”

Xe’ree’s senior season he was listed on 247 Sports as being the 17th best player, one spot behind Jacob Lane.

Of the top 20 players only Caleb Presley, Landen Hatchett and Jacob Lane signed with Washington as the other players fanned out across the country.

Xe’ree committed to Arizona State on August 8th before rescinding his pledge 4 months later on December 8th.

He had been in contact with Jedd Fisch at Arizona at the time and even held an offer from the Wildcats, but he ended up staying closer to home, selecting the University of Idaho where he played in all 13 games in 2023, and finished second on the Vandals’ squad with 75 stops.

Following the season where he picked up Freshman All-American honors he went to the opposite end of the country to Orland, Florida to play for the UCF Knights.  There he more than held his own as he racked 68 more tackles–again second on the team.

But with the departures of Tuputala and Bruener, his connection with Fisch proved to be his path home.

For the Huskies this he’s 5th in tackles on the season–one spot behind Jacob Lane, just like the good old days.