{"id":87133,"date":"2026-04-24T20:01:49","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T00:01:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/?p=87133"},"modified":"2026-04-24T20:01:49","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T00:01:49","slug":"breaking-cleveland-browns-select-washingtons-denzel-boston","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/2026\/04\/24\/breaking-cleveland-browns-select-washingtons-denzel-boston\/","title":{"rendered":"BREAKING: Cleveland Browns Select Washington&#8217;s Denzel Boston"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Cleveland Browns selected <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sports-reference.com\/cfb\/players\/denzel-boston-1.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Denzel Boston<\/a> out of Washington with the seventh pick of the second round of the 2026 NFL Draft. Boston was selected 39th overall and became the first Husky off the board in this year&#8217;s draft.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><strong>Cleveland Browns Select Denzel Boston<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The new Cleveland Brown was the leading receiver for Washington in 2025. He caught 62 passes for 881 yards and 11 touchdowns on the year. The <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/2025\/12\/14\/commanding-la-bowl-victory-for-washington\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">LA Bowl against Boise State<\/a> was the final game of his collegiate career, and it was one of his best. Boston caught six passes for 126 yards inside SoFi Stadium in mid-December. That performance included a 78-yard touchdown reception, which was Washington\u2019s longest play from scrimmage of the season.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Boston\u2019s abilities extended past just catching passes during his time in college as well. In what was his best career game,<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Boston caught 10 passes for 153 yards and a touchdown in Washington\u2019s 42-25 win over Illinois. That game included a 12-yard passing touchdown off the throwing arm of Boston, who connected with Jonah Coleman for the score.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The former Husky was also a reliable punt returner during his two years as a starting wide receiver under Jedd Fisch. Boston returned 26 punts for 220 total yards in his career and never muffed a punt. That included a 78-yard return touchdown against UC Davis in 2025. Though he was a starting receiver, Fisch continuously pointed to Boston\u2019s sure-handedness as the primary reason for putting him back deep on special teams.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><strong>Boston&#8217;s Career at UW<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Over the course of his four years at Washington, Boston played in 43 games. He totaled 1,781 yards and 20 touchdowns on 132 receptions. Impressively, in back-to-back seasons, Boston had nearly identical receiving statistics in 2024 and 2025. He caught 63 passes for 834 yards in 2024 and 62 passes for 881 receiving yards this past season. He was the team\u2019s leader in reception touchdowns each year.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><strong>Winning Contested Catches<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One of Boston\u2019s differentiating factors at wide receiver is his ability to turn 50\/50 passes into 70\/30 passes. Boston\u2019s contested catch numbers at Washington were significant. The former Husky receiver pulled down 10 contested catches in 2025 on 13 opportunities. The year prior, with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sports-reference.com\/cfb\/players\/will-rogers-1.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Will Rogers<\/a> at quarterback, Boston pulled down 12 contested catches. In total, he had just five in his entire career. On multiple occasions, Boston showed he can win battles at the catch point with defenders with strong hands.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">During the 2025 season, Boston described how he trains his catch-point skills. \u201cI\u2019m on that jug machine catching every other angle, turning my body,\u201d Boston said. \u201cEven the tennis ball machine [for] a smaller ball to catch. [I\u2019m] just using those resources to my use.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>&#8220;He&#8217;s just a great motivational guy,&#8221; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sports-reference.com\/cfb\/players\/demond-williams-jr-1.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Demond Williams<\/a> said of his former teammate. &#8220;He comes to work every day, ready to work, brings energy every single day. [He&#8217;s] just somebody that anybody would like on their team.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Main Image: <span>Jeff Hanisch-Imagn Images<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Cleveland Browns selected Denzel Boston out of Washington with the seventh pick of the second round of the 2026 NFL Draft. Boston was selected 39th overall and became the first Husky off the board in this year&#8217;s draft. Cleveland Browns Select Denzel Boston The new Cleveland Brown was the leading receiver for Washington in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3944,"featured_media":87170,"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":[35612,5,2,17],"tags":[1666],"class_list":["post-87133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-washington-huskies","category-bigten","category-featured","category-news","tag-jedd-fisch"],"modified_by":"Tony Siracusa, CFB Managing Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87133","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=87133"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87171,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87133\/revisions\/87171"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}