Former Viking Yankoff got caught in Huskies' logjam at quarterback

Colson Yankoff has gotten the message.

With so many ways to communicate these days — Twitter, WhatsApp or even a simple text — Washington’s football coaches chose another method to reach Yankoff.

They basically ignored him.

Yankoff was no uninvited stranger on the Husky practice field, either.

In fact, the former Coeur d’Alene High quarterback and consensus 4-star recruit was pried away from an original commitment to Oregon when Ducks Coach Mark Helfrich was fired at the end of the 2016 season.

At 6-foot-4 and 210 pounds, the multi-skilled Yankoff was considered a major prize in UW’s 2018 recruiting class.

That is no longer the case, as Washington Coach Chris Peterson now has managed to cram five highly sought QBs into the program, and is complaining that he’s got too many of them for effective practice reps.

Common sense suggests that a couple of those quarterbacks simply had to be culled, so after seeing limited action in the Spring Preview game last Saturday (completing 1 of 2 passes for 6 yards), Yankoff decided he’d gotten the hint.

He’s placed his name in the NCAA’s transfer portal, with the intention of leaving UW.

SO FAR, there has been no response to Press inquiries passed on to the Yankoff family.

Perhaps they are taking the whole process philosophically, but nobody could blame Colson and his folks for being pretty miffed about how all this played out.

It should be noted that there was another casualty in this quarterback traffic jam at Washington.

Another redshirt freshman (and top recruit), Jacob Sirmon from Bothell, also put himself in the transfer portal on Monday.

Part of the logjam was caused by the return of local product Jacob Eason, a 5-star recruit from Lake Stevens who won the starting QB job at Georgia and then decided to transfer back to UW.

Eason figures to be the Huskies’ starter for the 2019 season.

Sophomore Jake Haener sits behind Eason at the moment, but perhaps the move that finally spelled the end for Yankoff and Sirmon was the arrival of true freshman Dylan Morris from Puyallup.

Morris enrolled early and went through the entire spring practice, adding a fifth body at QB and cutting down reps for everyone but Eason and Haener.

Meanwhile, despite his complaints about the practice problems, Peterson doesn’t seem to be worried about future numbers at quarterback — having lined up 2020 recruit Ethan Garbers and for 2021, UW will herald the arrival of 5-star prospect Sam Huard from Kennedy Catholic High in suburban Burien.

Huard, son of former Husky and NFL quarterback Damon Huard, threw 10 TD passes in his first game as a high school sophomore.

FROM THE start, Yankoff has been an outlier in the Washington program — though originally that was considered a good thing.

He is by far the most athletic of Peterson’s full house at QB, and proved it again this spring by excelling at an event called the Husky Combine.

When he was recruited out of Coeur d’Alene High, Yankoff was ranked as the No. 4 dual-threat quarterback in the 2018 class by 247Sports. His athleticism and running ability seemed to give him an edge that UW’s pure drop-back recruits did not possess.

Yankoff ran for 2,121 yards and 43 touchdowns at Coeur d’Alene, in addition to throwing for 6,411 yards and 55 TDs.

When the Vikings went 9-3 and reached the state title game in Yankoff’s senior year, he rushed for 1,027 yards and 12 TDs on just 109 carries.

That pass-run combination seemingly made him a natural for Oregon, where memories of players like Marcus Mariotta are still fresh.

Even current Oregon QB Justin Herbert, who’s headed to the NFL next year, is a superior athlete who is a running option in addition to his elite-level throws.

APPARENTLY, Yankoff’s twin skills were not as appreciated on Montlake as expected, and he became something of an invisible man during his redshirt season.

Peterson insists that all his quarterbacks have big-time arms and can make all the necessary throws, which makes it puzzling that Yankoff hasn’t been given a shot to impress with his multiple skills.

You can also question whether any coach at a program like UW should recruit so many top-level quarterbacks in one batch — ensuring that one or two of them will be left out of loop almost immediately.

Peterson’s complaints about having too many quarterbacks to create workable practice time are a little rich.

Yo, Chris…

You’re the one who got these kids to enroll at U-Dub.

Yankoff has to be disappointed that, for whatever reason, he never could wedge himself into Peterson’s plans.

But now he can get a fresh chance somewhere else.

He deserves at least that much.

Steve Cameron’s “Cheap Seats” columns for The Press appear on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Steve also contributes the “Zags Tracker” package on Gonzaga basketball once monthly during the offseason.

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