Inside The Huskies

All Hands on Deck: Husky Makes Nation's Top 50 Receivers List

This player ranking was notable for who was omitted as well as highlighted.

Dan Raley

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Jalen McMillan saw his inclusion to an elite group of receivers online and offered a one-word comment, but it was hard to tell whether he was honored or annoyed by the whole thing.

A website that advertises itself as Big Game Boomer recently released a preseason list of its top 50 college football receivers and ranked the University of Washington sophomore pass-catcher 26th among the nation's returnees.

McMillan either was happy to be included or irked that he wasn't positioned higher.

The Fresno, California, product comes off a somewhat underutilized season in which he finished with 39 catches for a team-best 470 yards plus 3 touchdowns, all numbers that could easily double or increase more than that in coach Kalen DeBoer's newly installed spread offense.

The list put the 6-foot-1, 182-pound McMillan one slot behind Maryland's Dontay Demus Jr. (24 for 365 yards and 4 scores), and someone who's coming off an ACL tear, and one rung ahead of USC's Gary Bryant Jr. (44 for 579 yards and 7 TDs), who similarly to McMillan played for an offense-challenged 4-8 Pac-12 football team in 2021. 

The leader of this group of designated good-hands people was Ohio State's Jaxon Smith-Njigba, a 6-foot, 198-pound junior from Rockwall, Texas, who didn't hit one in 2021. He finished with 95 catches for 1,606 yards and 9 touchdowns, and left everyone scratching their heads as to why he didn't enter the NFL draft. 

Buckeyes wide receiver and teammate Emeka Egbuka, an imported sophomore from Steilacoom, Washington, probably wishes Smith-Njigba had moved on so he could get on the field more.

McMillan actually ranked behind another DeBoer-related receiver in No. 10 Jalen Cropper of Fresno State, who comes off a season in which he caught 85 balls for 899 yards and 11 scores while losing his coach to the Huskies. The 6-foot, 172-pound senior hails from Parlier, California, south of Fresno, and turned down all sorts of Pac-12 offers to stay home.

Between Cropper and McMillan, the receiver ranked at No. 16 has a familiar set of hands — belonging to BYU's Puka Nacua. He was McMillan's UW teammate before Nacu hit the transfer portal following the 2020 season. The 6-foot-2, 205-pound junior from Provo, Utah, collected 43 receptions for 805 yards and 6 TDs for the Cougars last fall.  

McMillan finds himself as the Pac-12's second-ranked receiver on this wish list, trailing only No. 18 Jacob Cowing of Arizona, though the latter hasn't appeared in a game yet for the Wildcats. 

Cowing, a 5-foot-11, 175-pound sophomore, made a name for himself at UTEP, catching 69 passes for 1,367 yards and 7 TDs last season before entering the transfer portal and joining the Wildcats. Cowing originally comes from Maricopa, Arizona, south of Phoenix.

Overall, the Pac-12 has four pass-catchers on Big Game Boomer's top 50 receivers list in Cowing, McMillan and Bryant, joined by USC's Mario Williams, an Oklahoma transfer who likewise hasn't played for the Trojans yet. 

Ranked 45th, the 5-foot-9, 185-pound Williams, a sophomore from Tampa, Florida, caught 35 passes for 380 yards and 4 scores last season for the Sooners and followed his Sooners coach Lincoln Riley to Los Angeles. 

Once the list came out out, McMillan posted a one-word response to this recognition: Loading. 

This would seem to indicate he was OK with it, that he could handle the pressure of being highlighted as one of the nation's 26 best. 

A more pressing question would be what does the Huskies' leading receiver, the equally talented 6-foot-3, 201-pound sophomore Rome Odunze (41 catches for 415 yards and 4 TDs), think about not being included?

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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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