Inside The Huskies

Husky Secondary Commits, Start Your Engines

The UW puts together a future defensive backfield with unmatched speed.

Dan Raley

UW coaches John Richardson, Vinnie Sunseri and Steve Belichick visit Rylon Dillard-Allen in Arizona.
UW coaches John Richardson, Vinnie Sunseri and Steve Belichick visit Rylon Dillard-Allen in Arizona. / Dillard-Allen

With Rylon Dillard-Allen's Friday commitment, the University of Washington football team has three legs of a world-class relay firmly in place. If he was running in the Olympic Games in Paris, this guy who calls himself "Batman" would be the anchor.

Consider that the 4-star cornerback from Mountain Pointe High School in Phoenix has clocked an extra-swift 4.29 40-yard dash.

Fellow UW corner commit D'Aryhian Clemons from Spanaway Lake High in Spanaway, Washington, can hold up a blistering 4.38 time.

Finally, Husky 4-star safety pledge Dylan Robinson from Bonita High in La Verne, California, put 4.4 on everyone's stopwatches the only time he has run the 40 in a football camp, which means he's probably a lot faster than that.

From the UW's recruiting class of 2025, that's a lot of elite sprinter speed collected all at once to guard against the pass and come up quickly to stop the run. It's fast times at Ridgemont High, the Montlake version.

Speed is such a necessary component for greatness. Following a 6-5 season in 1988, legendary UW coach Don James determined that his program overall was a step slower than all of the elite teams and he instructed his staff to concentrate on recruiting players who could flat-out run.

That meant the Huskies would turn even more of their attention to Southern California for players, to Los Angeles proper in particular, to upgrade their team speed.

James' recruiters came back with blazing players such as safety Dana Hall, linebackers Chico Fraley and Jaime Fields, running back Beno Bryant and even fleet quarterback Mark Brunell, and each were huge contributors in the UW's consecutive lopsided Rose Bowl victories over Iowa (46-34) and Michigan (34-14) , with the latter game capping a 12-0 national championship run in 1991.

Now comes the 5-foot-11, 165-pound Dillard-Allen, who once he arrives in Seattle will kick the tires of the 6-foot-3, 190-pound Robinson and the 6-foot, 185-pound Clemons, and they no doubt will challenge each other to see who's the fastest.

Jedd Fisch is banking on each one elevating his program to the upper-tier levels of the Big Ten, for ithe UW to be able to run alongside the Michigans and Ohio States, for the Huskies to dazzle and challenge everyone with their swiftness.

For the latest UW football and basketball news, go to si.com/college/washington

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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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