One of the top edge rushers of the last couple of decades for the Washington Huskies, Zion Tupuola-Fetui, aka "ZFT", has landed his first coaching opportunity at the University of Idaho. He will be joining the staff of head coach Thomas Ford Jr. as a defensive assistant coach.
Ford said in a press release from the Idaho Vandals, "We are really excited to bring Zion on our staff. We spent time together when he played at Washington, where he had a phenomenal career. I am excited to see him have that same success in the future coaching profession. He will bring great knowledge of pass rush, and his experience will help both of our defensive line coaches and, most importantly, our players."
ZFT and Ford overlapped when Ford was part of the Husky Football staff as an Offensive Quality Coordinator, and ZFT was sacking quarterbacks. Ford is a Seattle native and has deep ties to the area, as he coached high school football in Tacoma, WA, before moving to the college ranks.
Zion Tupuola-Fetui is a forever Husky and played all of his college years at Washington
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For ZFT, he is one of those rare players who got to play for six years in college. He played all of them for Washington. He utilized both a redshirt season and a COVID bonus year. He played from 2018 to 2023, totaling 16 sacks.
2020 is the year he made his name as a Husky and across the FBS landscape, being named First Team All-PAC-12 and Second Team All-American. He had 13 tackles and seven sacks. He was a one-man wrecking crew.
ZFT struggled to stay healthy in the following years, but was able to play a bunch in his junior and senior years, and while he couldn't get back to that sack number again from 2020. As a senior, he had 33.5 sacks and 29 total tackles.
He never could get a professional career going, not picking up enough interest from NFL teams, so he signed in 2024 with the CFL team, the Saskatchewan Roughriders. However, it seems like his heart was set for coaching, and now he's embarking on a new journey with the Idaho Vandals.