After 7-Year Drought, Coutts Plays in Game, With Maybe More to Come

Walk-on Husky tight end keeps making advances after changing positions.

Owen Coutts made the switch from wide receiver to tight end in spring ball. / Skylar Lin Visuals

Until this past Saturday night, Owen Coutts last played in a regulation football game in 2017 as a sophomore for Seattle's Ballard High School. The Beavers used him as a quarterback and a cornerback.

However, he didn't connect with that coaching staff and walked away from the sport. He ran track as a junior and a senior instead.

Yet once Coutts enrolled at the University of Washington, he felt football tugging at him once more, but his return wouldn't be immediate. He learned he had a rare heart condition that prevented him from playing during the two seasons Jimmy Lake was the Husky coach. He joined Kalen DeBoer's program during the first week of the 2022 season once plenty of testing proved he wouldn't be in danger by putting on a helmet and shoulder pads again.

Over the weekend, Jedd Fisch's staff provided the 6-foot-4, 230-pound Coutts -- an extra swift player who converted from wide receiver to tight end during spring practice -- with his first college playing time against Weber State, with the promise of more to come.

"Owen is up," Fisch said on Monday.

Coutts is needed on the depth chart following the opening-game leg injury suffered by tight-end starter Quentin Moore, the season-ending knee injury to freshman Charlie Crowell and the lingering upper-body injury for sophomore Ryan Otton, with the latter not expected back for at least three more weeks.

"It's been a little bit longer of a journey than I would have liked," Coutts said in 2023. "I was able to play only two years of football in high school. It's been a long journey to get where I am, but I feel everything happens for a reason."

DeBoer's staff initially saw him as a tight end, but Coutts wanted to try wide receiver. He brought the 2023 spring game to a rousing close with a spectacular 30-yard touchdown catch under the close guard of walk-on cornerback Antonio Hill, someone who had encouraged Coutts to come out and give Husky football a try.

Owen Coutts makes a sensational TD catch to finish up spring ball in 2023. / Skylar Lin Visuals

During spring practice this past April, Fisch and tight-ends coach Jordan Paopao took one look at Coutts, with his impressive size and 4.5 40-speed over 40 yards, and convinced him to change positions.

They told him how they had developed one-time Arizona walk-on Tanner McLachlan, also a former wide receiver, into a starting tight end for them and a sixth-round draft pick for the Cincinnati Bengals.

They informed Coutts that if he added at least 20 pounds and all went well, a scholarship might could be forthcoming and he could help the Huskies.

Jayden Wayne lines up in a one-on-one drill against tight end Owen Coutts. / Dan Raley

From there on, Coutts has been taking a crash course in how to play tight end. He's had his rough days mixed in with sensational plays, catching end-zone passes in spring practice from both Will Rogers and Demond Williams Jr.

Now he has a few Saturday snaps under his belt, having appeared in a game for the first time in seven seasons, with no telling how many more will come his way.

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