Inside The Huskies

Huskies Use Texas Momentum to Offer Young Dallas Linebacker

JJ Shelton from state-champion South Oak Cliff receives UW scholarship pitch.

Dan Raley

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The trickledown has begun.

Not quite a month following six fair-weather days in Texas, capped off by a triumphant Alamo Bowl showing against the Texas Longhorns, the University of Washington football program has started to put all of that positive Lone Star spin to good use.

On Monday morning, the Huskies offered a scholarship to not one but three Texas prospects — making recruiting pitches to 2025 inside linebacker Jayden "JJ" Shelton from South Oak Cliff High School in Dallas, 2024 fellow South Oak linebacker Brandon Jones and 2025 edge rusher Kamauryn Morgan from Red Oak High south of the city.

While these Texans have quite a bit of high school football left to play, with their Friday Night Lights and all that sort of thing, it never hurts to get in early and see where this attention might lead.

Besides, the Huskies now have plenty of time to tell that one hard-hitting Dallas-area linebacker in particular all about their prior success in running other Sheltons out onto the football field, namely Danny and Coleman, and preparing them for NFL careers.

This past season, this 6-foot-1, 200-pound JJ Shelton matched the progress of his South Oak Cliff team, needing to get comfortable in the lineup first before finding the right gear, thus helping pull the Golden Bears out of an 0-3 rut and propelling them to a 5A Texas state championship. 

At times, this Shelton looked a little like former Baylor and NFL linebacker Mike Singletary with the way he stuck his nose in there in a forceful manner yet at the same time exhibited real athletic moves while dropping back in coverage.

He finished with 64 tackles, a couple of sacks and an interception with a 50-yard return for his 13-3 football team. 

With his recruitment just beginning to take off, Shelton holds offers from Arizona State, SMU, Texas Tech and the UW, all received in January.

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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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