Inside The Huskies

Committed to Minnesota, Tafai Looks to Show UW He Deserved Better

The offensive tackle joins running back Cam Davis on his new Big Ten team.

Dan Raley

Offensive lineman Kahlee Tafai will transfer from the UW to Minnesota.
Offensive lineman Kahlee Tafai will transfer from the UW to Minnesota. / Skylar Lin Visuals

When he exited the University of Washington football team, Kahlee Tafai seemed to indicate on social media that he wasn't valued as much as he should have been, apparently unhappy with the role laid out for him going forward.

So the offensive tackle from Los Angeles entered the transfer portal.

Over the weekend, the 6-foot-5, 338-pound redshirt freshman committed to Minnesota, joining former UW running back Cam Davis as Gophers newcomers from Montlake, looking for a fresh start, if not a place to show the Huskies they underestimated him.

Tafai clearly had a rough beginning to the Jedd Fisch coaching era. During spring football, he did more watching than playing. He went from vomiting on the sideline in front of wide-eyed fans on the East practice field to getting helped to a training table in Dempsey Indoor in obvious distress with a knee sprain.

On top of that, Tafai, the UW's second-heaviest player, dealt with some sort of illness that had him watching almost as much as he was competing.

While it looked at times like he might not be long for Husky football, he was able to settle in, play in eight games as a redshirt freshman and start four outings at left tackle.

Tafai proved to be a sought-after player once in the portal, hearing from Alabama and the coach who brought him to the Huskies, Kalen DeBoer, plus USC, UCLA, North Carolina and others.

The attraction to him is he moves well for someone his size, though he's far from a finished football product, and maybe too big, at least to be an elite player. He also was part of the UW offensive line that gave up 10 sacks to Oregon in a 49-21 loss in Eugene to end the regular season, bearing some responsibility for that.

While Tafai became a starter, he was third up at left tackle behind fellow redshirt freshman Soane Faasolo and JC transfer Maximus McCree, with each player drawing four starts. McCree replaced an injured Faasolo, and Tafai subbed in when both McCree and Faasolo were slowed by different health issues.

On top of that, he probably wasn't happy when informed by the Husky staff it was going to seek additional help up front from the transfer portal and the UW since has added Carver Willis, a former Kansas State starting offensive tackle, to the roster.

Tafai will start over in Minneapolis, looking to show everyone he's better than they thought.

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.

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