Inside The Huskies

UW, UCLA Offer Dylan Williams, Ignoring his Commitment to USC

The Long Beach Poly linebacker committed to the Trojans in April.

Dan Raley

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Maybe thinking they can pull a Jackrabbit out of the hat, the University of Washington and UCLA this past week offered linebacker Dylan Williams, who has been a firm USC commitment for six weeks.

A class of 2024 prospect, the 6-foot-3, 215-pound Williams from Long Beach Poly High School was one of the first players to pledge his football services to Lincoln Riley, the Trojans' new coach, even though he's a few years from enrolling in college.

Riley apparently informed the 4-star recruit as part of his sales pitch that he intended to restore the USC-Poly connection that had fallen off over the past decade.

Still, the Huskies were hardly discouraged by any of this and made an offer to Williams on Friday and UCLA did the same on Thursday. 

Williams, whose vaunted team answers to the Jackrabbits, responded by posting his new offers on social media. 

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While the Trojans readily acknowledged they had strayed from recruiting Poly players, the same is true for the UW over a longer period of time.

Since the end of the Don James era, when highly regarded Long Beach Poly free safety Eugene Burkhalter, edge rusher Danianke Smith and free safety Richard Washington each joined the UW, the Huskies have only signed a handful of players from the school over the past two and a half decades. 

The last was edge rusher Corey Waller, who signed with Steve Sarkisian's program in 2011 but didn't stay long.

The physically gifted Williams comes off a sophomore season in which he had 48 tackles, with 11.5 resulting in lost yardage, and he recovered a pair of fumbles, returning one for a touchdown, for an 11-4 team.

Williams has 15 offers, with others coming from Miami, Florida State, Michigan State, Arizona State, Arizona, Utah, Colorado and TCU.

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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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