Nice Catch: UW's Cade Otton Named to Mackey Award Watch List

The junior tight end has been a two-year starter for the Huskies and worked his way to become one of the nation's top tight ends.

Cade Otton, the latest in a long line of gifted University of Washington tight ends, is one of 36 players from his position nationwide selected to the 21st John Mackey Award watch list.

Otton, a 6-foot-5, 240-pound junior from Tumwater, Washington, will try to match the accomplishments of former Husky tight end Austin Seferian-Jenkins, who won the Mackey award in 2013.

Hunter Bryant, Otton's Husky teammate and fellow starter, finished among the three Mackey finalists last season. Bryant is now an NFL free-agent signee with Detroit.  

Otton has been a two-year starter in Seattle, opening in 13 games as a sophomore and in 10 more as a redshirt freshmen in the UW's traditional dual tight-end set.

In 2019, he caught 32 passes for 344 yards and a pair of touchdowns, giving him career totals of 45 receptions for 518 yards and 5 scores.

Otton is considered the prototypical tight end, blessed with enough size to serve as a productive blocker while showing solid receiving skills.

He's one of four Pac-12 players named to the Mackey watch list, joined by Stanford junior Tucker Fisk, Oregon senior Hunter Kampmoyer and Arizona State senior Curtis Hodges. The complete list of Mackey candidates can be found here. 

John Mackey was a Syracuse University tight end who spent 10 seasons in the NFL, nine of them with the Baltimore Colts and five of them as a Pro Bowl player. He often was on the receiving end of passes from fellow Hall of Fame inductee Johnny Unitas. Mackey was just the second tight end to receive HOF honors.

In Super Bowl V in 1971, Mackey was involved in a famous play in which he caught a 75-yard touchdown pass from Unitas after the ball was twice deflected, once by a teammate and then by a Dallas Cowboys defensive back. The Colts won the game 16-13 on a last-second field goal. 

In 1970, Mackey became the first president of the National Football League Players Association following the merger of the NFL and the AFL.

Mackey died in 2011 at 69 and was found to have suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy post mortem.

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