Inside The Huskies

Former Husky QB Great Cody Pickett Faces Health Challenge

The record-setting Washington passer lives in his Boise hometown.

Dan Raley

Cody Pickett, one of the most prolific passers in University of Washington football history, faces open-heart surgery following routine medical testing that revealed he has significant arterial blockage.

Pickett, 41, was examined in the Boise area as a precautionary measure following the death this past year of a relative to a heart attack, but the results still were unexpected, according to his wife Carleigh in a social-media posting. He met with a surgeon this week and will get a second opinion in Seattle.

A former rodeo star as well as a football icon, who grew up on Chicken Dinner Road, Pickett remains an endearing figure to this Idaho community, which has reached out to wish him well upon hearing of his prognosis.  

Retired from the CFL and pro football for a dozen years now, Pickett is the father of three, a Boise insurance broker and the Eagle High School boys basketball coach.

The 6-foot-4, 225-pound Pickett played at the UW from 1999 to 2003, initially recruited by Jim Lambright before answering to Rick Neuheisel and Keith Gilbertson as his coaches. 

He still ranks first in several passing categories for the Huskies, most notably his 2002 season total of 4,458 passing yards. That year, he completed a dizzying 365 of 612 pass attempts for 28 touchdowns.

Pickett's career stats at the UW read like this: 792 completions in 1,373 attempts for 9,916 yards and 53 touchdowns.

After an injury-filled senior season in Seattle, Pickett went to the San Francisco 49ers as a seventh-round draft pick. He appeared in five games over two seasons and started two. After serving on practice squads for the Houston Texans and Oakland Raiders, he headed to the CFL.

Pickett played for the Toronto Argonauts, Montreal Alouettes and Calgary Stampeders before retiring from pro football in 2010 and returning to Idaho. 

Cody Pickett was a record-setting UW quarterback.
Cody Pickett hurdles for yards against Washington State / UW Athletics

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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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