{"id":71708,"date":"2025-01-15T12:00:37","date_gmt":"2025-01-15T17:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/?p=71708"},"modified":"2025-09-16T21:39:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T01:39:08","slug":"washington-and-johntay-cook-part-ways-new-void-at-receiver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/2025\/01\/15\/washington-and-johntay-cook-part-ways-new-void-at-receiver\/","title":{"rendered":"Washington and Johntay Cook Part Ways, New Void At Receiver"},"content":{"rendered":"

Johntay Cook<\/a> and Washington have parted ways. The news began swirling on Tuesday afternoon and was confirmed on Tuesday evening. Washington\u2019s top transfer portal addition is no longer on the team following a meeting that day. As details on the story continue to develop, the former five-star in the class of 2023 will not suit up in purple and gold next season.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Johntay Cook Departs Washington<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Cook was an exciting addition to Washington\u2019s Winter transfer portal class from a talent perspective. He was a top-five receiver in his recruiting class and was a top-100 transfer portal player in this cycle. Cook had just 16 career catches at Texas in two seasons with 273 yards and two touchdowns. The former Longhorn is listed at 6\u2019-0\u201d and 186 pounds and would have been a talented addition to a receiver room that is losing Giles Jackson<\/a> and Jeremiah Hunter<\/a> to graduation. Younger players including Keith Reynolds<\/a> and Jason Robinson Jr. have also transferred out.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Moving Forward<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Washington\u2019s transfer portal class now takes a step backward, losing one of its top-rated players. The incoming transfer class now features 13 players with just three offensive players. That group is made up of two offensive linemen in Geirean Hatchett and Carver Willis<\/a>, and tight end Kade Eldridge. Nine of the remaining ten players are defensive players, and the other is a long snapper.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This puts the Husky staff in a tough position. It will need to fill the void in its receiver room that\u2019s losing two starters and a few quality depth pieces heading into next season. Of the top 50 transfer wide receivers, all but two have committed, with Cook being one of the two. Washington had interest in a handful of other wide receivers including North Texas transfer DT Sheffield<\/a> who committed to Rutgers, and Tulsa transfer Joseph Williams who committed to Colorado.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Jedd Fisch was hired at Washington on January 14th, 2024, exactly one year to the day from when Cook and the Huskies parted ways. One of the difficulties of the late timing of his hiring was the limited player availability in the transfer portal. Fisch pointed to this on several occasions leading up to, and during the 2024 season. The Washington staff had to depend on the Spring transfer portal window to do much of its roster construction. With Cook\u2019s departure, the staff is now looking at a similar situation, but specific to one position. After Denzel Boston<\/a>, Rashid Williams<\/a> was the next-most targeted wide receiver who will return in 2025. He had 11 catches this past season.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Johntay Cook and Washington have parted ways. The news began swirling on Tuesday afternoon and was confirmed on Tuesday evening. Washington\u2019s top transfer portal addition is no longer on the team following a meeting that day. As details on the story continue to develop, the former five-star in the class of 2023 will not suit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3944,"featured_media":71714,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5,35612],"tags":[7983,33247,1666,9962,509],"class_list":["post-71708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-bigten","category-washington-huskies","tag-big-ten-football","tag-denzel-boston","tag-jedd-fisch","tag-johntay-cook","tag-washington-huskies"],"modified_by":"Michael Kovacs, ADMIN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3944"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71708"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71708\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71715,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71708\/revisions\/71715"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}