SEATTLE — If there is a parallel between college football and deer hunting, it is the invisible preparation, explains Will Rogers.
These deep routes to Denzel Boston don’t suddenly materialize on a Saturday afternoon.
“In August, they start putting up cameras and things like that, and deer hunting season doesn’t start in Mississippi until December,” Washington’s quarterback said of his home state. “People think it just happens overnight, and that’s kind of how it works on the football field. People really just watch the games, but it’s a process we’ve been going through since January.”
“I think you get out of both things what you put into them.”
Rogers is a quarterback and the son of a coach; his father, Wyatt, is the offensive coordinator at Brandon High, the same Mississippi school that produced former Washington State star Gardner Minshew, and Will “ran around with a football if he had a sippy cup,” Wyatt says. Had it not been for Georgia’s Aaron Murray, the younger Rogers would have left Mississippi State as the SEC’s leading passer. The middle of three children, Will also grew up riding ATVs on his family’s property and hunting with his grandfather. Rogers is naturally right-handed but shoots left-handed, he says, because that’s what his dad does. Wyatt jokes that his son is “probably an average hunter at best,” but he loves the outdoors more than anything.
“I hope I can play in the NFL for 10, 15 years,” Will Rogers said, “and then I can hunt deer, ducks and turkeys for the rest of my life.”
(Just FYI, his favorite season is duck season.)
