Huskies' Toomey-Stout Turns Video Into Game Time, Viral Fame

The UW walk-on safety has earned plenty of game snaps, no easy feat without a scholarship.

If you've ever played football, you learn fairly quickly to avoid the guy with the crazed look in his eye. There's always one of them running around the field, trying to take someone's head off.

It's a Clint Eastwood sort of menacing glare, like I'm not afraid of anybody or anything. 

Sean Toomey-Stout, University of Washington walk-on safety, has that glint, that fearless approach, and it works for him.

His piercing eyes suggest he just might be willing to pull on a wingsuit, jump off the top of a Husky Stadium upper deck and just see where he lands.

It's the same approach Toomey-Stout has brought to UW football in joining all of that highly regarded, heavily recruited and paid-for UW talent, and making a spot for his unintimidated self. 

He's a construction management student, not a 3- or 4-star recruit, but probably good with a hammer no matter how he uses it.

"If I'm going to get my degree I might as well go around and hit people and have a blast while I'm doing it," Toomey-Stout said.

From Whidbey Island, which is not necessarily a college football recruiting hotbed, Toomey-Stout joined the Huskies when Jimmy Lake was the coach in 2021 and he understood his underdog role as an immediate redshirt, though he didn't shy from it.

"I came in with the previous staff, from a small school, from a small island, from the middle of nowhere, and I'm just really grateful for it," he said. "I'm just trying to make the most of an opportunity to wear the purple and gold. I've waited to do this my whole life."

Of the more than two dozen walk-ons on the UW roster, Toomey-Stout is one of just five who played more than mop-up time in 2022, joined by junior linebacker Drew Fowler, sophomore tight end Griffin Waiss, sophomore punter Jack McCallister and sophomore place-kicker Grady Gross.

The 5-foot-10, 192-pound junior defensive back appeared in six of the 13 games for the Huskies, including two of the biggest ones against Oregon and Texas, and finished with seven tackles.

Sean Toomey-Stout is a well-used walk-on for the UW / Skylar Lin Visuals

"You constantly have to be proving yourself and constantly have to be working," he said. "It's really the film just shows it. So if you put it on tape, they'll put you on the field, in spite of whether you're a scholarship player or a walk-on. That's really what it boils down to."

Even with the Huskies adding eight new players to the secondary over the offseason, Toomey-Stout continues to rotate in with the second or third units. 

While he didn't have enough notoriety to land a scholarship emerging from Coupeville High School and the Whidbey town of Greenbank, population 1,626, he's the guy who joined the Huskies with something no one has — a YouTube video that went viral. 

Even last week, a UW coach was showing the footage on his phone to players unaware of Toomey-Stout's fame, which involved a deer running the length of the field during a Coupeville football game with Sean not far behind and scoring on a 95-yard kickoff return. 

"It's always funny to see their reaction," he said. "They ask, 'Did they stop the game?' They're always concerned, 'What did they do with the deer?' I just say, 'They just let us play and I just ran after the deer and it worked.' "

Well, the deer disappeared into the night, but Toomey-Stout became a college football player, one who makes the UW play him, scholarship or not.

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