Washington football lands a three star Texas linebacker

Washington football has landed their second true defensive recruit of the 2020 recruiting cycle!

Washington football has landed the commitment of three-star linebacker Cooper McDonald from Northwest High School in Justin, Texas! McDonald is currently rated as the 129th best outside linebacker in the country, but he looks like he has a very high ceiling, and could move all over the Washington defense. It’s also worthy to note that McDonald is an exceptional athlete, who is currently the reigning Texas 5A state champion in discus.

McDonald has elite size (6’3, 220 pounds) that the Huskies are going to be able to use both at inside linebacker and as a pass rusher. Depending on how the Huskies finish off this recruiting cycle, we could see him take a lot of snaps at both positions when he gets to campus. He also has some impressive plays on his film as a special teams gunner, and if he can make some plays on special teams for the Huskies (who definitely need a boost there) he could find his way onto the field very quickly.

Fit at UW

As I just said, special teams will probably be his quickest route to the field, and with the four game redshirt rule, depending on how he performs in practice we could see him use a few of those games similar to Edefuan Ulofoshio in 2018. He shows great ability to rush the passer on his film, as well as great athleticism in coverage, so I’m sure we’ll see him taking snaps at both OLB and ILB with the Huskies.

One of the biggest things to note with McDonald is that fans shouldn’t sleep on him due to his 247 Sports Composite rating (.8194). The 247 ratings alone has him rated almost 1,000 spots higher than the Composite, and probably the most important thing to note is his ability on the field. And while he didn’t have offers from the big name schools like Texas, Alabama, and Ohio State, the biggest offer other than the Washington offer, is one from Utah. And if Utah offers you as a defender, they’re an excellent player. A player with similar offers who ended up being pretty successful that you can draw a comparison to would be Sidney Jones, a similarly rated three-star player who ended up choosing Washington over Utah.

Congratulations to Cooper on his commitment to Washington, and we can’t wait to see him put on the purple and gold in the future!