Inside The Huskies

UW's Shephard Singled Out as Receivers Coach of the Year

The Husky assistant coach has won a similar award for each of his two seasons in Montlake.

Dan Raley

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After sort of ignoring the University of Washington football team for postseason rewards, everyone now is telling the Huskies how great they are.

This week, Kalen DeBoer received another national coach of the year honor, giving him four.

The UW offensive line was pegged as the nation's best.

Add to that JaMarcus Shephard, who on Friday was selected wide-receivers coach of the year by an organization called A Football Coach Community. 

It's the second consecutive season in which the always enthusiastic Shephard has earned a national honor coaching his position, with FootballScoop choosing him as the 2022 top receivers coach.

Shephard has had a crowning coaching moment with junior Rome Odunze becoming a consensus All-America selection and a finalist for the Biletnikoff Award.

Odunze enters the CFP semifinals against Texas with 81 catches for 1,428 yards and 13 touchdowns, while sophomore Ja'Lynn Polk has 60 receptions for 1,000 yards and 8 scores.

Interesting enough, Shephard receives this award on a day in which freshman receiver Taeshaun Lyons revealed he is entering the transfer portal, which was a head-scratching decision.

So he's leaving a CFP contender and Shephard, the nation's top coach at his position, for something unclear, other than it will be hard to top what he had.

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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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