How Will Rogers found his way to Washington (twice)

'We couldn’t be happier with how things worked out.'

Photo courtesy of UW Football.

SEATTLE — If there is one parallel between college football and game hunting, Will Rogers explains, it’s the unseen preparation. 

Those deep routes to Denzel Boston don’t suddenly materialize on Saturday afternoon.

“You start putting out cameras and stuff like that in August, and deer season doesn’t even open until December in Mississippi,” Washington’s senior quarterback said, referring to his home state. “People think it just happens overnight, and that’s kind of how it happens on the football field. People really just see the games, but It’s a process that we’ve been going at since January. 

“I think you get out what you put in, in both things.”

Rogers is a quarterback and a coach’s son; his father, Wyatt, is the offensive coordinator at Brandon High, the same Mississippi school that produced former Washington State star Gardner Minshew, and Will was “walking around with a football when he had a sippy cup,” Wyatt says. If not for Georgia’s Aaron Murray, the younger Rogers would have left Mississippi State as the SEC’s career passing leader. The middle of three children, Will also grew up riding four-wheelers on his family’s property and hunting with his grandfather. A natural righty, Rogers fires a gun left-handed, he says, because that’s how his dad does it. Wyatt jokes that his son is “probably an average hunter at best,” but loves the outdoors more than anything.

“I hope I can play in the NFL for 10, 15 years,” Will Rogers said, “and after that, I can chase deer and ducks and turkeys the rest of my life.”

(For the record, duck season is his favorite.)