Husky Roster Review: Jordan Washington Knows No Speed Limits

Spring football is all about repetition, restraint and getting the work done. Long, explosive plays just aren't a priority over 15 practices. People tend to pull muscles or tear up knees when they're continually at full throttle.

So everyone was left just a little bit awestruck when in a scrimmage period redshirt freshman running back Jordan Washington shot through a hole that opened up over the right side of the offensive line and was gone.

Sixty yards later, the 5-foot-11, 185-pound speedster touched down in the end zone at Dempsey Indoor with no one remotely close to him -- turning in by far the longest and most electric scoring play of this spring football session in Montlake.

Broken down, it was the extra swift Washington giving the University of Washington football team a jolt on the shores of Lake Washington.

It was not only poetic, it was downright exclamatory.

"You see he has the ability to take a hit and the ability to run the football and he has the ability to make plays," UW coach Jedd Fisch said approvingly.

This is one in a series of articles -- going from 0 to 99 on the Husky roster -- examining what each scholarship player and leading walk-on did this past spring and what to expect from them going forward.

Washington from Long Beach, California, showed up at the UW last summer after enrolling early and participating in the University of Arizona's spring football practice.

He initially signed on with Fisch's coaching staff in Tucson, yet by the time he showed up for spring football, everyone had left for the UW. He gave the new coaches a try, but it wasn't what he wanted so transferred and came north.

Washington since has used Jonah Coleman as a UW mentor, which was the plan all along at Arizona. The senior running back from Stockton, California, showed him the way to the weight room and the young running back has gone from 157 pounds to 185 in less than a year's time and it shows.

"He embodied getting bigger this offseason," Coleman said of his young understudy. "He looks faster, he looks stronger, he looks more fluid running the ball. He attacked the offseason hard, too. Probably the hardest thing he's done in his life was the offseason."

That should translate to plenty of playing time this season as he gives the Huskies a speed burner to go with their power backs in Adam Mohammed and Coleman. The coaching staff will pick its spots in finding opportunity for Washington to get and run.

"This is an opportunity for Jordan," Fisch said, "to go and out and show what he can do."