UW Football - Offseason Scholarship Chart and Roster Analysis

We are less than six weeks from the start of the UW Football fall camp.  UW coaches are also fully engaged with setting up their recruiting board for 2015 with many offers already out and summer camps cramming the schedule.  We now have enough information available to us to put together our latest scholarship analysis.

With the recent defections of players like Patrick Enewally, Demore'ea Stringfellow and Lawrence Lagafuina, the Huskies are now coming in at 86 scholarships.  Obviously, that is one too many and incoming Freshmen have not all yet arrived, so expect further updates to this chart before things are all said and done.  It is important to note that 86 is our best estimate.  Technically, scholarships have to get renewed every season and it is not UW's custom to report on those transactions nor is it Chris Petersen's custom to make an announcement whenever somebody departs the program.

As always, the chart below only counts signed players in the "total count" statistics.  Committed 2015 players are included in the chart, but are not tallied in the positions groupings or counted as a claimed scholarship.

Some Dots for your consideration:

• I kept the "Rush End" designation on the chart as an acknowledgement that the role will still likely exist even if the new coaching staff doesn't necessarily call it that.  I'm eager to see who else Pete Kwiatkowski rotates into that hybrid role.  Players like Hau'oli Kikaha, Marcus Farria and Psalm Wooching may all get a look in that role sometime during the fall


• The slottings of the offensive linemen should be taken with a grain of salt.  It is hard to know how some of the tweeners will ultimately fall.  A guy like John Turner could just as easily end up at G or C as opposed to Tackle while a guy like Coleman Shelton seems to be a candidate who may be able to flex to T.  The UW looks very deep across the O-Line for 2014.  However, the pending graduations of both Riva and Hatchie mean that the new staff is going to need to see a few of these young tackle candidates breakout before the 2015 season hits.  Yeah, we are looking at you Jake Eldrenkamp and you Andrew Kirkland.


• Expect to see several non-scholarship players make some noise for playing time in the fall.  Guys like K Mitch Johnson, S Brian Clay, OL Ross Dolbec and RB Ralph Kinne may all see regular action on special teams - if not in the rotation of their positions - before all is decided.


• For a guy that was sloughed off by the last staff, it is hard to not look at the WR group and conclude that DiAndre Campbell is going to be counted on for some major playing time in 2014. 
  


• The medical retirement of Ryan McDaniel sure does make the RB grouping look different.  While the depth is still solid, it doesn't look quite as impressive...especially if your point of view extends past the 2014 season.  As Anthony noted in his June recruiting recap, Petersen and Co may take up to 3 OKGs at RB in the upcoming class.


• My goodness, how did we get so lopsided at Safety?  Is this James Sample's fault?


• Though I slotted Sean Constantine in at MLB, the reality is that we have just two guys who are clearly slotted to play in the middle - John Timu and Azeem Victor.  The defensive staff has a ton of LB depth to pull on, so they don't need to be urgenly concerned about finding another clear MLB candidate.  However, cultivating another "field general" type who can play in the middle wouldn't be the worst thing in the world given that Timu is in his last season.


• Yeah, that's a lot of Tight Ends for a coaching staff that doesn't really cultivate traditional Tight Ends.


• The use of the terms "Defensive Ends" and "Defensive Tackles" are quite subjective.  There are guys like Evan Hudson, Andrew Hudson and Daniel Turpin who are clearly going to serve roles focused on gap control while some of the others will flex between 3T and 5T.  Regardless, the depth behind Danny Shelton is Elijah Qualls and then some hopes and dreams.  Jaimie Bryant may not need a redshirt year given that he is a more physically developed man.  However, it would be a shame if the staff feels like it needs to burn redshirts of guys like Greg Gains and Will Dissly to cover this depth.

There you have it - the latest and greatest UW Football Scholarship chart.  No roster will ever look perfectly balanced and spaced out (unless you are Alabama), but I do have to say that this is amongst the cleanest looking charts that I can remember pulling together since I've been doing this.  What do you see when you look at it?  What looks good and what looks like it could use some work?