2020 Recruiting Profile: Jack Yary, TE

With Yary’s surprising separation from USC in the news this past week, major hinting of his interest in UW, and our recent visit from top 2021 TE target Brock Bowers, I figured it’d be a good time to take a look at Yary as a prospect and his fit at UW.

Jack Yary (TE, 6’6” 250, Murrieta Valley HS, CA)

Yary’s a classic in-line Y-TE prospect that oozes potential as a versatile weapon in our offense. Listed at 6-6, 250 lbs, Yary’s thin build at that size (he’s probably a bit lighter than his listed weight) has lots of room to fill out while already nearing a playable weight. His hudl tape didn’t have much in the way of blocking, a critical skill for our Y-TEs, but more searching of the internet yielded lots of 2019 blocking tape playing against Temecula Valley and Vista Murrieta.

There were a couple of things that stood out on tape, and the first was his diverse alignments and blocking assignments. He was aligned in a number of places including Y-TE, flexed into the slot, aligned off the line as a H-back, and even as a fullback. From those alignments he was tasked with sealing the edge, stalk blocking in space, pulling on counter plays, and lead blocking as a fullback. This is a really good sign when projecting these TE recruits into our system since we have a wide variety of blocking schemes that utilize TEs, and it ensures that they have a foundation of experience with these types of blocks and blocking concepts to lean on.

The second thing that stood out in his blocking tape was his tendency to take plays off or play without much of an edge when asked to block. He was a willing blocker when pulling, sealing the edge, or some other block at the point of attack, but he would very rarely finish blocks with much physicality. Some of this might be attributed to poor functional strength, but improved effort, additional strength training, and better blocking technique will be necessary for him to reach the standard of blocking that we expect out of our TEs.

As a receiver, he’s a natural hands catcher with good speed and decent wiggle in the open field. His athleticism isn’t game breaking, and he won’t wow with his yards after catch (he’s neither a powerful nor elusive runner), but he showed in his more extensive game film (non-hudl highlights) that he was the type of reliable volume receiver that should grow into being a trusted third down target and underneath to intermediate option. Otton falls into that category of receiving TE as well. One note that I made was there were a couple of fumbles, or near fumbles, that occurred when Yary was making catches in traffic. He is either failing to secure the ball, or he’s having trouble making clean catches when in traffic. It may be something to keep an eye on since ball security can be coached up but sure hands in traffic is more difficult to improve.

As far as Yary’s potential fit at UW, I think that he would slot in with Redman as our next generation of versatile and well-rounded TEs. He’ll need to work out his blocking, but his size and athleticism (an underrated aspect of being an effective blocking TE) give him to tools to be a good blocker. He’s already a good enough receiver that I’m not worried about this area of his game, but if he really wants to develop into a match up threat, he’ll need to improve his catching in traffic and when contested. Adding that will allow him to leverage his size advantage better against the hybrid DB/LB players in modern defenses. A redshirt year, whether its forced on him by transfer rules or not, would serve him well.