Oregon Week is Never Dull for Kirkland, Who’s Seen it All
Jaxson Kirkland is the closest thing the University of Washington football team has to an Oregon player in the lineup, which seems a little odd.
After all, the Huskies previously have gone to Rose Bowls and an Orange Bowl and landed on the cover of Sports Illustrated riding the talents of such talented and Oregon-imported players such as Bob Schloredt, Sonny Sixkiller, Jimmy Rodgers, Walter Bailey and Brett Collins .
Oh, quarterback Camdyn Stiegeler and linebacker Jahleel Heath, both walk-ons from Oregon City, currently are Huskies this season, but Stiegeler has been spotted on crutches during recent games and Heath hasn’t been able to move up the depth chart.
That leaves Kirkland as the only crossover player for Kalen DeBoer’s team entering Saturday’s UW-Oregon game in Eugene.
The 6-foot-7, 340-pound offensive guard is listed by the team as a Portland product, but he actually only went to high school there and his family home looks out on the Columbia River from Vancouver, Washington.
Better than anyone though, Kirkland understands what lies ahead for his team.
“[It’s] some hatred for sure,” he said cryptically. “Some like to call it hate week.”
For Kirkland, he’s gone through the full spectrum of emotions and outcomes against the Ducks. As a redshirt freshman in 2017, he watched the UW power through a 38-3 victory over Oregon at Husky Stadium.
A year later, he was on the field and watched in despair as the Huskies missed a game-winning field goal at the end of regulation and went on to lose 30-27 in overtime in Eugene.
In 2019, Kirkland and the Huskies lost a 35-31 shootout to Oregon at Husky Stadium, getting fourth-quartered by their rivals.
Two years ago, he and the rest of the UW offensive line caught COVID in rapid-fire progression and wiped out the position group right before the game in Eugene, scrubbing it.
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Last season, Kirkland trudged through a 26-16 loss to Oregon at home and saw Husky coach Jimmy Lake shove a player during the action and get fired not long after.
Never a dull moment when the Huskies and the Ducks get together.
“As much as I want to treat it like it’s just another game, and it has to be handled that way, but also you get a little emotional and it certainly means more,” he said this week. “Certainly for me, Oregon is in my backyard and I have a lot of friends and family that did go there, but as you know I’m Washington and it’s in my blood through and through.”
Yes, he is the son of Dean Kirkland, who was a UW offensive guard and an all-conference player three decades before him, so state boundaries weren’t going to dictate where the younger Kirkland played.
This Kirkland has come off a delayed start to his season under a new coach because of injury and an NCAA mandate for pulling out of the NFL draft, plus a position switch from left tackle to left guard, to enjoy a fairly productive campaign so far as he tries to go out with a good bowl game experience and the pros eager to draft him.
Yet first, he has to contend with the Oregon Ducks once more, as an Oregon guy to some degree, in a game that’s always sure to stir up something.
“The nation does pay a lot of attention to this one usually, like this year, where we go into this game and both teams are ranked up there and have big wins on their schedule,” Kirkland said. “So yeah, it’s a big one.”
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