The Freshman Progression for RB Adam Mohammed

High expectations remain in place for the first-year player from the state of Arizona.

Adam Mohammed shows off his muscles in spring ball. / Skylar Lin Visuals

Adam Mohammed is older and wiser now. Throughout spring ball, the University of Washington running back was all of 17 years old, though he displayed chiseled arms and legs that made him resemble a pro football player.

While he already looks fierce in a Husky football uniform, the 6-foot, 212-pound freshman who hails from Glendale, Arizona -- a Phoenix suburb where Super Bowls and Fiesta Bowls are regularly or annually played -- Mohammed comes off as a little shy, certainly humble.

"I've always been the underdog," Mohammed said in a team meet-and-great on Tuesday.

That's sort of hard to believe considering this precocious kid piled up 5,180 yards and 94 touchdowns rushing in just 35 games for Apollo High School in those Phoenix suburbs.

With fall camp underway, Mohammed likely stands third in his position on the UW depth chart, falling in line behind junior Jonah Coleman and senior Cam Davis, and ready to run for the Huskies as a first-year player.

He's a prodigy with his coaches expecting a lot out of him right away.

"I saw a football player," UW running-backs coach Scottie Graham said of recruiting him. "I went to a game where he threw for 200 yards, ran for 100 yards and picked off a pass for 60 yards. I'm like, 'I want him.' "

Graham shared how he publicly even tried to ignore Mohammed, who held scholarship offers from Boston College and California right away, in order to hide him and keep a big crush of schools from getting involved.

Mohammed originally committed to Fisch's staff when it was at Arizona, drawn to those coaches and their pro-style offense and more than willing to follow them to the UW. after attending classes in Tucson for two and a half weeks.

Adam Mohammed shows off his athleticism with this spring catch. / Skylar Lin Visuals

Coleman, who moved from Arizona to the UW, also was a factor in where Mohammed ended up.

"Every Arizona home game he'd just come up to me, shake me and say, 'Your time is coming,' the freshman back said. "Now I'm here. I'm learning a lot."

In the first two Husky fall practices, Mohammed shadowed Coleman everywhere. They stretched together, did high-stepping exercises in tandem. A connection made between these two didn't catch anyone off guard.

"It didn't surprise me what he's doing," Graham said of Mohammed's football maturity. "We played Jonah as a freshman. The first game he started was up here against Washington as a true freshman. He graded out 98 percent. That's the expectation for Adam."

Besides, Mohammed since has turned the ripe old age of 18. He's a veteran, an old guy. Those big biceps haven't gotten any smaller either.

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