Inside The Huskies

Ex-Husky Jackson Sirmon Returning for Another Season at Cal

The linebacker led the Bears in tackles with 104, which ranked him third in the Pac-12.

Dan Raley

In this story:

Jackson Sirmon is coming back next season — no, not to Montlake, but for another run through the Pac-12 answering to his dad and playing for the California Bears.

The former University of Washington linebacker announced on Twitter on Wednesday that he would be returning for a sixth college football season, and his second in Berkeley, rather than enter the NFL draft.

The 6-foot-3, 235-pound Sirmon from Brentwood, Tennessee, is coming off a highly productive season in which he led the Bears in tackles with 104, which ranked him third in the conference. He capped off everything with a first-team All-Pac-12 selection as voted by the league coaches.

Sirmon came up with 11 tackles when he faced his former teammates in a Berkeley game that the Huskies won 28-21. Yet a season highlight no doubt was his 37-yard fumble return for a touchdown that put the Bears up for good in a 27-20 Big Game victory over Bay Area rival Stanford.

A downside would be Cal's overall dreary 4-8 season, matching the exact same 2021 downturn he experienced at the UW.

A Husky team strength of veteran linebackers quickly came unraveled when the losing began, Jimmy Lake got fired and a coaching change took place in Seattle.

Edefuan Ulofoshio and Sirmon began that season as the UW's starting inside linebackers. They were former roommates, close friends and proven playmakers.

Yet Ulofoshio, a second-team All-Pac-12 linebacker in 2020, twice was injured and required surgery on an arm and a knee. He hasn't started a game since last year's 24-17 loss to UCLA, now covering a span of 18 games, though he returned as a reserve to play in the UW's final four regular-season outings this fall.

Sirmon, who along with cornerback Kyler Gordon were the only 12-game starters on defense a year ago, transferred to Cal following all the team upheaval. 

He welcomed a chance to play for his father, Peter, who is Cal's defensive coordinator and linebackers coach, which was a first for them.

Taking Ulofoshio and Sirmon out of the mix for much of this season definitely put a damper on the Husky defense. Ulofoshio likely will return in 2023 and reclaim his starting job — and get a chance to play against his former teammate when the UW and Cal meet again. 

You can access a story on Sirmon in the Cal Sports Report, which similar to Inside the Huskies, is part of the Sports Illustrated online network of sports sites, by clicking on this link.

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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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