Huskies' Well-Worn Defensive Linemen Ease Into Spring Football

No position area for the University of Washington football team with multiple starters returning is more fortified, experienced and, for that matter, battered than the defensive tackles.

Back are Tuli Letuligasenoa and Faatui Tuitele who each opened all 13 games last season except one — when Letuligasenoa came off the bench as a reserve at Arizona State, but only because he was hobbled.

Collectively, these grizzled veterans, one a sixth-year senior from Concord, California, and the other a fifth-year junior from Honolulu, Hawaii, have appeared in 73 Husky outings and started 42. 

Yet with all of this steady hand-banging and hand-to-hand combat comes a physical toll.

For the first three spring practices before the quarter break, Letuligasenoa and Tuitele pulled on uniforms but were relegated to non-contact work and forced to watch much of the scripted activity as they recover from offseason and unspecified medical procedures.

"Those guys just had a few things that got cleaned up after the season and we're on the home stretch," UW coach Kalen DeBoer said of his down linemen. "Well, we're close on one and it might be a couple more weeks with the other."

Tuitele missed all of DeBoer's spring football practices a year ago as he rode around on a cart with his left foot in a boot, but was ready when the season began. 

Letuligasenoa and Tuitele haven't necessarily been dominant players, though Tuli was selected All-Pac-12 honorable mention in 2021, but they've provided much-needed stability up front to a Husky defense that not too long ago had opposing teams running all over it.