Right before the world shut down in 2020, Texas A&M wanted Mike Washington at one of their camps.
He and his family were convinced that if the Aggies’ coaches could see him move in person, an offer was coming.
Then COVID-19 hit and the door slammed shut.
“I remember like it was yesterday,” Washington said. “Just before COVID, Texas A&M wanted me to come to one of their camps. Me and my family, we felt once they could see how I move, they’d probably end up offering me. [Lockdown] ended everything. I wasn’t able to visit any schools.”
That missed camp visit set off a chain reaction that took Washington from Buffalo to New Mexico State, then to a committed spot at Utah where he didn’t feel truly wanted and finally to Fayetteville, where everything clicked.
Now, years after a pandemic rewrote his football story, the former Arkansas running back is headed to Las Vegas as a member of the Raiders.
“COVID kind of ruined a lot of things,” Washington said, “but we’re still here.”
Feeling wanted made all the difference
When Washington took a visit to Arkansas on a whim after growing frustrated at Utah, he felt something different the moment he arrived in Fayetteville.
The Razorbacks wanted him and they made sure he knew it.
Arkansas running backs coach Kolby Smith didn’t waste any time making the pitch either.
“[Coach Smith] asked me, he’s like, ‘You want to play in the SEC?'” Washington said. “And it was like, one of them things was like, yeah, it was a no brainer.”
Washington had been highly recruited as a high school junior, but mostly by Group of Five programs.
COVID wiped out any shot at Power Five offers materializing. His transfer to New Mexico State was actually his first official visit ever taken, a detail that shows just how much the pandemic disrupted the normal recruiting experience for players in his class.
Once he got to the Hogs and earned his way into the starting lineup, he made the most of it.
He ran for 6.4 yards per carry and averaged 8.1 yards per reception, putting up numbers that got NFL scouts paying close attention.
Game that put him on the map
Ironically, the game that truly announced Washington’s NFL credentials came against Texas A&M, the program that never got to see him at that canceled camp years earlier.
On the very first play of that game, he powered through the Aggies’ defensive line for 15 yards off the left side.
On the very next play, he found a crease and outran the entire defense to the 10-yard line. Two plays. Sixty-five yards.
By the final whistle, he had 147 yards on 16 carries — nearly 10 yards per carry — and added three receptions out of the backfield to show he can be a dual threat. The scouts in the stands had seen enough.
Draft wait and Raiders’ call
At 6-foot-1 and 223 pounds with a 4.33 in the 40-yard dash at the NFL Combine, Washington had checked every box.
Comparisons to Adrian Peterson and Derrick Henry followed. Most analysts had him going in the second or third round as the third-ranked back in the class.
But the NFL’s longstanding trend of devaluing the running back position took hold. Two Notre Dame backs were taken at opposite ends of the first round and then silence fell at the position.
The first three rounds ended up featuring the fewest running backs drafted in the modern era. When San Francisco finally took a back late in round three, it was Indiana’s Kaelon Black — not Washington — who got that call.
Las Vegas eventually came calling and Washington’s wait was over.
He’s boarding a plane to the desert as a professional, headed to a team that genuinely wants him there.
It’s a feeling he’s learned never to take for granted.
Not after a pandemic took away his shot at a Power Five offer, not after bouncing through three programs before finally landing in the SEC.
The Hogs’ standout has been proving people wrong at every stop.
The Raiders are just the next stop on that same road.
