For months, Washington kept its eye one offensive line recruit from the Grand Canyon State.
Parker Brailsford, a 6-foot-3 and 265-pound lineman out of Saguaro High School in Scottsdale, Arizona, began to hear from Huskies OL coach Scott Huff in March and Brailsford made it clear to him that the interest was very mutual.
Over the next two to three months UW continued to learn more about Brailsford from Jason Mohns, his high school head coach, and Mark Martinez, his position coach at Saguaro, as well as Huff reaching out to his teachers and guidance counselor to get a complete understanding of who he is.
Huff has long-standing relationships with many coaches in the state, especially the aforementioned two, being a former prep player from Arizona himself back in the late 1990s.
In fact, Huff played at Horizon High School in Scottsdale, roughly a 10-mile drive away from Saguaro.
As the coach and other UW staffers were learning more about Parker, he was hearing high praise from his coaches about Huff. Even a former teammate offered an insight to what life as a Dawg is like.
“He really likes it up there. Like, he really, really likes it up there,” Brailsford said, referring to redshirt freshman cornerback Jacobe Covington, a former four-star recruit from Saguaro who signed with UW in the 2020 class.
Just recently Phil Brailsford, Parker’s father, saw Karina Covington, Jacobe’s mother, and she had nothing but positive things to say about both the staff and her son’s experience at the school.
So, when Huff texted the family to schedule a Zoom call for Tuesday, May 11, there was a sense that if UW came with a scholarship offer the decision was already made.
In total, 17 UW staffers, including full-time assistants and recruiting personnel, appeared on the screen that evening when the call started. Phil knew at that moment it wasn’t just another ‘hi, how are you?’ conversation.
Parker and his parents spent April and the early part of May sorting through his dozen-plus offers, which ranged from Arizona, Colorado and USC in the Pac-12 to Michigan State out of the Big Ten and Boise State from the Mountain West Conference.
Lake had a 45-minute conversation with Brailsford before he told him he had a scholarship to UW with his name on it. His response; is it committable? Lake confirmed that it was.
And then, Brailsford surprised the Huskies head coach and told him he wanted to commit to the program right then and there.
“You want to talk about this?” Lake asked Parker, with a slight smile, as Phil recalled. “And Parker was like, ‘my family, we’ve already talked about it and been planning for this. I’m all in.’”
However, Lake had to wait until this past Monday (May 17) to send out his signature “Woof” tweet to signal the addition of Brailsford. Parker wanted to call the other schools he was interested in to inform them of his decision, and to thank them for their time, before he made his commitment to Washington public.
A Special Call with a Brick Layer
Once Brailsford caught the attention of Huff earlier this year – and certainly after he announced his pledge to UW this week – the number of Nick Harris comparisons were bound to be plentiful.
While the former is ranked higher coming out of high school as a three-star in the 2022 class, Harris was a true epitome of a diamond in the rough recruit garnering just three scholarship offers – UW, Cal Poly and New Hampshire – back in 2016 out of JSerra Catholic (San Juan Capistrano, Calif.)
After Brailsford made his commitment to UW earlier this month he received a phone call from the player he may very well mirror once he arrives on campus next January, Nick Harris.
“It’s pretty cool that they would take the time to do that,” Phil said. “It’s pretty cool that a guy like Nick Harris – he’s off to the NFL and doing his own thing – still goes back to the school to work out there. Still has close relationships with the coaches and coach Huff. That’s a lot of what we have at Saguaro.”
Harris, a two-star recruit by Rivals in 2016, went on to be a First-team All-Pac-12 selection in 2018 and 2019 before being drafted by the Cleveland Browns No. 160 overall (fifth-round) in the 2020 NFL Draft.
He came back to UW for the first annual Spring Game under head coach Jimmy Lake on May 1 and could very well get the chance to return to Husky Stadium for a game if the Browns travel to Seattle to face the Seahawks in the near future.
