Inside The Huskies

Kirkland Adds Another Outland Watch List to His Accolades

Just one Husky offensive or defensive lineman has won the prestigious trophy.

Dan Raley

Kirkland Adds Another Outland Watch List to His Accolades
Kirkland Adds Another Outland Watch List to His Accolades /
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Jaxson Kirkland wasn't born when the Outland Trophy, given to the nation's top offensive or defensive lineman, was awarded to a University of Washington football player for the only time in its 75-year history.

However, the Kirkland family had to feel a little responsible for the Huskies' great and powerful defensive tackle Steve Emtman being saluted in 1991.

In the three previous seasons leading up it, Jaxson's father, Dean, an all-conference UW offensive guard, went up against Emtman on a daily basis in practice. Both were brawlers on the football field, always pounding on each other.

An offensive tackle and a 39-game starter, the younger Kirkland now has a chance to add to the UW's Outland Trophy collection after being named on Tuesday to the award's 89-player watch list — for the second consecutive year.

The 6-foot-7, 340-pound Kirkland returns for a sixth season as the most decorated Pac-12 player at any position, coming off a pair of league coaches' first-team rewards.

Emtman notwithstanding, the Outland has been exceedingly hard for a player from the Pac-12 and its other iterations to claim it. The UW All-America selection and No. 1 overall NFL draft pick remains one of just eight trophy winners.

The Outland was created in 1946, shortly after World War II, and it took 21 years for someone out West to claim it. USC offensive tackle Ron Yary, whose son Jack briefly was a UW tight end, was the first recipient from the region in 1967. 

It took another 24 years for the trophy to go to Emtman. The conference since has provided Outland winners in Arizona nose tackle Rob Waldrop (1993), UCLA offensive tackle Jonathan Ogden (1995), UCLA offensive tackle Kris Farris (1998), Washington State defensive tackle Rien Long (2002), Stanford offensive guard Joshua Garnett (2015) and Oregon offensive tackle Penei Sewell (2019). 

Garnett, of course, is the son of Scott Garnett, a former UW defensive lineman in 1980-83.

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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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