Low-key Letuligasenoa Gets In Everyone's Way Except His Own

The Husky defensive tackle played well at UCLA, you just wouldn't know it from speaking to him.

Tuli Letuligasenoa can be powerful, volcanic, absolutely profane in the heat of the battle for the University of Washington football team.

Yet question the junior defensive tackle about his singled-out game performance at UCLA, and the 6-foot-1, 307-pound junior from Concord, California, turns meek, barely audible, excruciatingly humble.

Letuligasenoa, the UW player with the longest last name but one of the shortest egos on his football team, is the reluctant hero.

"Honestly, I felt like I had an all right game," he said a few days following the 40-32 defeat to the Bruins. "It's just the fact when you mess up a couple of plays, if you know what I mean, those are like the ones that come back to memory, not the ones you actually made. I felt I did all right."

Husky co-defensive coordinator William Inge thought otherwise, that Letuligasenoa played much better than all right. In a game in which the UW defense gave up a season-high 40 points and 499 yards of total offense, Inge was asked if anyone on his unit graded out well.

Inge came up with one name. Yeah, the long one. The one attached to the veteran defensive lineman who finished with 3 tackles and 2 pass break-ups on last Friday's stat sheet, and proved reliable much of the time.. 

"Tuli graded out very well — he probably had one of his better games," Inge said. "Up front, he did a great job of being able to attack the line of scrimmage, holding his space, knocking his guys back. Hey made a couple of plays. He definitely did his job." 

Husky DT Tuli Letuligaseanoa tries to catch up to UCLA quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson :: Jayne Kamin-Oncea/USA TODAY Sports

As the Huskies prepare for Saturday's game at Arizona State, Letuligasenoa has appeared in 33 games over five seasons, starting 17 of them, including 16 of the past 17. He comes off a 2021 season in which he singled out as an All-Pac-12 honorable-mention selection.

He has proved to be more of a dependable mainstay on the UW defense than anyone else, with the edge rushers rotating continuously, the linebackers getting hurt, transferring or beating each other out, and the secondary under a total revamp. Even his fellow starting DT from last season and good friend Taki Taimani chose to transfer to Oregon, where he comes off the bench now.

Yet Letuligasenoa chooses to pick at his game rather than celebrate a peak moment.

"I felt like I left a few plays on the field that could have been crucial moments for us," he said. "I guess it's just something to keep building off, honestly. Not trying to get too high, not trying to get too low, just stay even keel."

In comparing five games this season to 12 played in 2021, the Huskies actually are permitting slightly more points, at 23.2 per game to 22.7, and have shown a slight uptick in total offense, enabling 341 yards per game to 336. before. However, the run defense has made a complete turnaround, dropping its overly generous allowance of 193 rushing yards per game last season to just 108 an outing now.

Letuligasenoa has a lot to do with that, you just won't hear it coming from him.

"That's the whole deal with this whole new coaching staff is to keep getting better," he said. "We're trying to get better, we're trying to improve. We're trying not to go or take steps back. We're obviously trying to take steps forward, so yeah."

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