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No one ever disputed whether Sav'ell Smalls was a good college football player or not.
It was being great that was the hard part.
High expectations are difficult for everyone, especially when you're labeled a 5-star recruit and it's pre-ordained that you will dominate anyone who dares come into contact with you
Yet college football has never been that accommodating, so Smalls felt the need to leave the University of Washington football program and his hometown after three seasons and on Tuesday the edge rusher committed to Colorado and Deion Sanders.
Primetime, meet High Time. Or it's About Time.
The 6-foot-3, 259-pound Smalls will join the Pac-12 program now headed up by Deion Sanders and seek to put himself on a much bigger stage at the base of the Rocky Mountains.
Certainly he brings an in-your-face personality that matches his new coach — or did you not see Smalls walk up to the edge of the seats in Autzen Stadium, with the Huskies on the verge of finishing off their 37-34 upset, and tell all of those Oregon fans to shut up?
Smalls left the UW as the only player to appear in every game in 2020, 2021 and 2022, 29 in all, proving he was worthy of Saturday snaps.
Where things were tough for him was in coming away with no sacks during all that time on the field, holding up no resolute moments of edge-rusher glory.
Smalls simply was a functional player for the Huskies, taking his rotations and coming up with 32 tackles. Yet just one went for a tackle for loss. He also had a fumble recovery.
With his new football surroundings, he'll have a chance to turn up the heat on his football career in a place that gets bitter cold at times.
Smalls and all of the other new faces — with almost a total roster cleansing — will be asked to bring Colorado back to respectability from a dreary 1-11 season, which included a 54-7 loss to the Huskies in Seattle.
He played against the Buffaloes that day, with some of his UW teammates getting on the field for the first time. Smalls made an appearance and retired from play without so much as registering a tackle.
Coach Prime will probably be all over him to start piling up those elusive sacks and create general mayhem.
However, it won't happen against Smalls' old team. Colorado and the UW don't play this coming season.
Go to si.com/college/washington to read the latest Inside the Huskies stories — as soon as they’re published.
More must-reads:
- Georgia makes Kirby Smart the highest-paid coach in college football
- Bills become latest team to try to fix talented, unproductive wide receiver
- The 'AP First-Team All-Pro tight ends' quiz
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