Exit interview: Zion Tupuola-Fetui on six years at Washington
Ahead of the NFL Draft, the edge rusher reflects on his college career.
It is a testament to the duration of Zion Tupuola-Fetui’s college career — and to the memory-hole nature of Washington’s bizarre 2020 “season” — that one might not immediately summon the game he submits as his top career highlight.
Yes, of course, ZTF’s strip-sack of Caleb Williams at the Coliseum last season will go on the mantle. But it finishes no better than second place, behind Washington’s 24-21 victory over Utah at an empty Husky Stadium in 2020, a 21-point comeback that at the time felt like a landmark victory for first-year coach Jimmy Lake, and a rare, feel-good moment amid — ahem — Unprecedented Times.
Tupuola-Fetui had three sacks that night — it would have been four, he reminds, if not for a questionable roughing penalty — to bump his season total to seven in three games, the breakout of all breakouts for a guy who wasn’t even really supposed to be a starter just yet. He also forced a fumble and recovered another, which he returned 29 yards.
“It was a fun game to be a part of,” he said, “even though COVID stripped that from Husky nation’s presence.”
You likely couldn’t have convinced him that night that he would stay at Washington for another three seasons, the last two of them spent playing for a different head coach. Had the 2020 season been a few games longer, he says, he might have considered turning pro that year. He returned in 2021, but tore his Achilles during spring practices and missed most of the season. He figured 2022, then, would be his final year, but he mostly came off the bench behind starters Bralen Trice and Jeremiah Martin.
So ZTF became a member of college football’s expanding club of sixth-year seniors, teaming with Trice to anchor the edges of Washington’s defensive line, helping the Huskies win 14 consecutive games and a Pac-12 title and a College Football Playoff game. He played through a torn labrum in his right shoulder that later required surgery, to go with the labrum he tore in his left shoulder as a freshman. He played through tremendous grief, too, after the Oct. 28 death of his father, Molia, whom, ZTF noted, had long clamored for precisely the kind of sack-fumble he delivered one week after his passing.
I caught up with Tupuola-Fetui on Friday to discuss his UW career, his recovery from injuries and much more. Questions and responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
(Also, a quick programming note: I’ll be at Saturday’s spring practice, but a prior obligation will preclude the usual post-practice summary.)