Inside The Huskies

Durfee Ruled Out for Rest of UW Spring Football with Elbow Injury

The edge rusher was injured in a previous Saturday practice.

Dan Raley

Zach Durfee was injured the previous Saturday, leaving the field wearing a sling.
Zach Durfee was injured the previous Saturday, leaving the field wearing a sling. / Skylar Lin Visuals

Edge rusher Zach Durfee, one of the great hopes as a playmaker and possible honors candidate for the University of Washington defense, is injured and done with spring football, coach Jedd Fisch confirmed on Saturday.

The 6-foot-5, 255-pound Durfee suffered an elbow mishap late in practice the previous Saturday, came off the field in a lot of pain, was taken into a medical tent and later walked to the locker room while wearing a sling with a trainer alongside him.

He didn't come out to watch the team practices on Tuesday and Thursday, as most injured players do, leading media observers to conclude his absence must have been due to having surgery, which Fisch confirmed.

"He's out for about two months," Fisch said, meeting with the media for the first time in 10 days. "He'll be back, we believe, and be fully cleared for the start of [fall] training camp."

Transferring in from Division II Sioux Falls last spring, Durfee arrived with a great deal of fanfare fueled by Kalen DeBoer's coaching staff as someone who had all of the physical attributes to be great -- speed, size, athleticism.

However, the NCAA forced the Minnesota native to sit out the entire regular season and the Pac-12 championship game against Oregon as a double transfer -- he also attended North Dakota State as a student only -- before changing the rule once he established a year of UW enrollment this past December.

Zach Durfee delivers a blow to the throat of UW offensive lineman Aidan Anderson.
Zach Durfee delivers a blow to the throat of UW offensive lineman Aidan Anderson. / Skylar Lin Visuals

Durfee drew four plays on defense against Texas in the Sugar Bowl last New Year's Day and that stands as his only Husky game time.

Fisch's staff had him working as a starting edge rusher from the beginning of spring ball, recognizing his talents immediately. This was a player who piled up 11 sacks in 11 games at Sioux Falls as a redshirt freshman in 2022.

If he proves to be as talented as advertised once he gets healthy, the Huskies probably can expect to have him on the field for just one more season.

For the latest UW football and basketball news, go to si.com/college/washington

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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.