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Ex-Huskies Feeney, Bronson Dive Into Different Kind of Spring Ball
The former UW football players keep their pro ambitions intact in the UFL.
University of Washington spring football practice begins on Wednesday, with the first of 15 workout sessions held over the following month.
Yet this weekend, former Husky linebacker Travis Feeney and defensive tackle Josiah Bronson are playing for real in the new United Football League, the latest iteration of springtime pro football and a merger of eight teams from the USFL and XFL.
On Saturday, the 6-foot-4, 240-pound Feeney opened the UFL season at Ford Field in Detroit, where his St. Louis Blackhawks lost 18-16 to the Michigan Panthers. He came up with a pair of tackles, both tackles for loss, with one of them a sack.
Now 31, he's hardly ready to give up the game. Recruited out of Richmond, California, to the UW by Steve Sarkisian and finishing up with Chris Petersen, he played in 38 outings for the Huskies, finished with 187 career tackles and was an All-Pac-12 honorable-mention selected.
The Pittsburgh Steelers drafted Feeney in the sixth round in 2016, but he couldn't make it out of training camp with the Steelers or the New Orleans Saints. He bounced around and appeared in seven games fin 2021 for the CFL's Toronto Argonauts and in 10 games for the USFL's Tampa Bay Bandits in 2022, leading the latter team with 4.5 sacks.
The 6-foot-3, 304-pound Bronson will spend the spring with the Memphis Showboats after appearing in eight NFL games for the New Orleans Saints, Cleveland Browns and Miami Dolphins over three seasons and totaling 12 tackles.
From Covington, Washington, he began his college career at Temple before playing four UW seasons for Chris Petersen and Jimmy Lake, appearing in 29 games and coming up with 42 career tackles.
The UFL, with recognizable football names in coaches Bob Stoops, Wade Phillips and Skip Holtz, will play a 10-game regular season and a two-week postseason.
