Tommy and Sonny: They Were a High-Octane UW Passing Combo

These two Washington football players took the Husky passing game up another notch, able to score instantly.

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After Sonny Sixkiller led the nation in passing as a sophomore, the Washington coaching staff had some work to do in the offseason.

These guys had to find more receivers for their prolific quarterback.

This newfound emphasis on passing at will was no one-and-done experiment in Seattle. 

It was Air Husky now, and it wasn't hard to find guys who wanted to catch Sixkiller passes

Tommy Scott, for instance.

He showed up to watch the 1970 Stanford-Washington game in Palo Alto, California.

Jim Plunkett vs. Sixkiller. 

Scott left the stadium that day determined to play with the quarterback with the cool name and the rocket arm.

 A junior-college receiver from Northern California, the pint-sized Scott was all of 5-foot-9 and 170 pounds -- a couple of inches  smaller and a few pounds lighter than Sonny even.

He knew all about Stanford, but almost nothing about the Huskies. He was smitten after seeing Sixkiller let fly with 41 passes and complete 18 of them, and nearly pulled off a major upset before losing 29-22. 

"I'd never really heard of Washington before," Scott said. "I'd never even dreamed of about coming there -- until I saw Sonny play. Then my mind was made up."

For spring football in 1971, the Huskies brought in three California JC receivers in Dennis Brimhall, Scott Loomis and Scott, none standing any taller than Sixkiller. 

Scott, lightning fast, was the big catch among these little guys. He'd played at Junipero Serra High School in San Mateo, California, where the wide receiver opposite him was future NFL Hall of Fame inductee Lynn Swann and their quarterback was Jesse Freitas Jr., who played briefly with the San Diego Chargers. 

Scott entertained serious offers from Alabama, Miami, Notre Dame, much of the Big Ten and the rest of the then-Pac-8 Conference.

"Great hands," Sixkiller said. "He ran really good routes. He was a tough little guy."

Think the Nick Nolte character who played wide receiver in the film North Dallas Forty, down to the same bushy mustache. 

Several of Scott's college suitors were willing to do just about anything to deter him from playing at Washington. They tried to convince him that Husky coach Jim Owens was going to get fired at any moment. He didn't listen. He wanted to play with Sixkiller. 

Jim Krieg, another 5-9 speedster and a JC transfer the year before, was Sixkiller's go-to guy in 1970. A native New Yorker, he caught 54 passes to break the UW record by a wide margin. He was back.

Not everyone was sure how two of these guys were going to complement each other. Or if they would play at the same time.

The 1971 spring football game showed how. A crowd of 22,000, the biggest one yet to take in this event, saw Sixkiller lead the Varsity to a 28-6 victory over the Alumni. It was a festive afternoon, a revealing time.

Much more restrained than in the same game 12 months earlier, Sonny completed 12 of 19 passes for 124 yards and an 11-yard touchdown to one of the newcomers, Brimhall. He split time with backup Greg Collins, who stayed healthy this time, keeping his collarbone intact.

Sixkiller felt a lot of pressure coming off the ends from the grads, who had beefed up their roster. Sonny got sacked three times, including once by Ben Davidson, the take-no-prisoners Oakland Raiders defensive end and Bud Lite commercial pitch man. He was still a fearsome player, even while hung over from the pregame festivities from the night before. 

"Davidson flopped on him like a berserk walrus," sports columnist Georg N. Meyers wrote in the Seattle Times.

The game was Scott's coming-out party, though he was running with the second unit. The guy showed he could play. 

He dazzled the crowd with a 92-yard TD catch from Collins, hauling in the ball on the dead run at midfield, and a 41-yard punt return for another score, reversing the field to find an opening. 

He got everyone excited, just like Sixkiller. He was a backup no more.

Sixkiller now had a pair of primary targets he could count on for the 1971 season. Krieg and Scott. He wouldn't play favorites. Not in throwing to them. Not in zinging them with wisecracks.

"They're great," Sonny said. "Too bad they don't have another foot on their heads."