When Texas Tech football coaches moved Amier Washington from defensive tackle to defensive edge late last season, Washington could have told them how much he appreciated the position switch.
Instead, he showed them.
As a previously little-used true freshman, Washington wreaked havoc in Tech’s 34-14 conquest of California in the Independence Bowl. He was credited with four tackles for loss, including two sacks and a forced fumble in a somewhat out-of-nowhere performance.
“It felt amazing,” Washington said Tuesday, “because I proved to them that I could play outside and I can do really good.”
Washington is a 6-foot-2, 265-pound redshirt freshman from Class 4A Little Cypress-Mauriceville in southeast Texas. He’d played in only one other game before the Independence Bowl, and it took a combination of circumstances for him to get into that one. Myles Cole, the starter at field-side end, opted out of the bowl game, and top backup Dylan Spencer was out with a shoulder injury.
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That made Charles Esters the starter and jumped Washington from fourth on the depth chart to second.
He seized the opportunity, turning Cal tackles into turnstiles.
“We loved it,” Esters said. “He was able to step up and make plays as a freshman coming in. This was his first game at outside linebacker, so he really stepped up and showed he could play in our room. Everybody — all the defensive players — loved that.”
Coaches moved Washington to edge days before the regular-season finale. He’d trained all season to play defensive tackle. Reaching his target weight of 280 pounds, though, proved futile.
Now he doesn’t need to, because he gave the Red Raiders a lot to think about in his debut on the edge.
“It was pretty big,” he said, “I wasn’t really a DT guy, so as soon as I got to outside I already knew what I was doing pretty much, because I played edge all my high-school life.”
Asked what coaches saw in him to make the switch, Washington said, “Probably my speed and my twitchiness and I’d say my d-end skills, because every time they lined me up outside, I was killing it.”
Still, it was only one game, a game against what was a 6-6 team at the time.
“It probably made him hungry,” position coach C.J. Ah You said. “It’s just a start, though. What he did last year was last year. This year’s a whole new year, so we’ll see how things go.”
Washington agrees he needs work. For all the plays he made against Cal, Washington said his sacks came off stunts and, “All my pass-rush moves, they weren’t that good.”
“My goal is to definitely get better at what I’m doing and actually make an impact on the team,” he said, “instead of just sitting around doing nothing.”
“He’s making strides,” Ah You said. “He’s still learning the position, so this time during spring has been very beneficial for him.”
Now Washington has set a high standard for himself, and his stats columns start over at zero.
Not to mention, the Red Raiders have a room full of defensive edge players, many of whom have little in the way of career starts but have shown promising signs as underclassmen. Among them are Joseph Adedire, Isaac Smith, Esters, Harvey Dyson, Spencer and Washington. Smith and Adedire are sidelined this spring, Smith recovering from knee surgery and Adedire from a late-season injury.
“Harvey and Charles Esters are having a very solid spring practice,” Ah You said. “Amier is doing some good things, Dylan as well and then the young guys are in a learning process.”
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Texas Tech football’s Amier Washington raised stock at Independence Bowl
