Inside The Huskies

Ex-Husky WR Reportedly Enters, Withdraws, Re-Enters Portal in 24 Hours

This player spent the 2023 season with the UW and appeared in 2 games before moving to Utah.

Dan Raley

Taeshaun Lyons on UW recruiting visit.
Taeshaun Lyons on UW recruiting visit. / UW

Taeshaun Lyons will be remembered at the University of Washington as an impatient freshman pass-catcher who entered the transfer portal a year ago on the same day his position coach, JaMarcus Shephard, was named national receivers coach of the year.

With the Huskies preparing for the College Football Playoff semifinals, something most college players never experience, and with all of the UW starting receivers soon to be NFL bound, creating untold opportunity for him to move up, Lyons passed on it all.

In Salt Lake City, the now redshirt freshman receiver will be known by the University of Utah, according to CBS Sports reports, as the guy who couldn't make up his mind before he did -- entering the portal on Thursday and withdrawing from it hours later, and re-entering it on Friday.

It will be interesting to see if Lyons, once a highly regarded 4-star recruit who picked the UW over Notre Dame, Miami and Oregon, can ever settle in at any one place long enough to realize his vast potential, or whether he'll harm his career by being overly impulsive.

A year ago, Ryan Grubb, then the Husky offensive coordinator and now manning that role in the NFL for the Seattle Seahawks, seemed to point to a disconnect between the young player and the UW program, that maybe his departure wasn't totally voluntary.

"Sometimes, it's just a fit for guys," Grubb said. "Taeshaun is a good kid. He's just looking for maybe somebody who fits his personality. Sometimes we're looking for guys who fit ours, too."

The 6-foot-1, 170-pound Lyons from Hayward, California, appeared in just two games for the Huskies and wasn't always focused when it mattered, having a sure touchdown pass from Dylan Morris glance off his hands against Michigan State and turn into a goal-line interception in the UW's 41-7 victory in East Lansing.

For a 5-7 Utah team this past season, Lyons played in just four games and made his first college catch, a 4-yarder against Southern Utah, yet he hardly improved his football situation in a significant manner by moving from the UW to Utah.

Lyons arrived in Montlake in the same 2023 recruiting class with fellow receivers Rashid Williams and Keith Reynolds, all Californians, and only Williams remains on the roster. Reynolds recently entered the portal.

Shephard, now the co-offensive coordinator and receivers coach at Alabama, blamed the system in place for Lyons' untimely UW departure, suggesting the temptation now is too great for players to change teams and forgo the needed developmental process.

"We, as grown people, are the ones who made the system," Shephard said. "We made these decisions, not these 18- to 22-year-olds. We decided they could do these things. They're just living in the world we created. Good luck to him."

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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