While Portal Transfers are a Quick Fix, Meet the Husky Tailback of the Future
A little more than 100 miles separate the California cities of Fresno and Bakersfield in the sprawling and hard-working San Joaquin Valley, which was hardly enough to keep Kalen DeBoer and his football coaches from finding out about Tybo Rogers.
This running back from Bakersfield High School was their first recruiting commitment once they arrived at the University of Washington.
This long-standing familiarity between the new coaches and the speedy 5-foot-11, 180-pound player helped bring him north, and it didn't hurt at all that the Bakersfield High coach was Rashaan Shehee, once a highly accomplished Husky tailback himself.
"I think we nailed it with him," DeBoer said of Rogers. "He was our No. 1 guy from the winter. He felt that and jumped on board."
The attraction to this running back is he does much more than run. For the Bakersfield Drillers, he actually found the end zone more times as a receiver by getting open in the flat rather than as a rusher bursting through the line.
Rogers finished up his high school career — one that ended six games early for him this past fall after he injured a shoulder, which has since healed — by rushing 164 times for 1,756 and 11 scores, with a long run of 92 yards, and catching 61 passes for 1,118 yards and 13 scores.
"We were aware of Tybo obviously down there in the valley, not far from Fresno," DeBoer reiterated. "We knew who he was. We knew what his skill set was, not just as a runner but as a guy who can catch the ball. He runs really good routes."
Rogers gets from here to there in more ways than one, DeBoer's coaching staff will tell you.
Similar to South Dakota quarterback and one-time UW commit Lincoln Kienholz, the Huskies got in early on Rogers after identifying him as a high-end prospect. Whereas other schools didn't really make the connection at first, they eventually swung around to the likelihood that this particular quarterback and tailback were pretty good and did something about it.
Unlike Kienholz, who flipped his commitment from the UW to Ohio State once the Big Ten school made a big play for him, Rogers received a late recruiting push from USC, UCLA, Oregon State, California, Arizona and several other schools but he stayed firm on his Husky commitment.
Rogers, in fact, is an early enrollee at the UW this quarter, eager to get started and show what he can do by the time spring football comes around.
"I know there was a lot of other schools at some point that looked at our eval [evaluation] and saw that in him as well," DeBoer said. "He held true to that and we're certainly excited that he did."
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