Washington Huskies football recruiting: trending towards the upper tier of the Pac-12

It might not look like Chris Petersen and the Washington Huskies are going to have a big presence at The Opening next week with only one commitment in attendance, but that really doesn't tell the whole story.

Last year at the nation's premier off-season event, the Huskies had pretty much zero presence in terms of prospects with legit interest in attending UW. This year, in addition to 4 star running back commitment Sean McGrew, there are also three other blue chip recruits that are all currently projected to pick the Huskies based on the 247Sports Crystal Ball picks. 4 star linebacker Camilo Eifler has 100% of picks in for the purple and gold, 4 star offensive lineman Michael Eletise appears to be trending towards Washington as well, and they are also in great position to land 4 star cornerback Byron Murphy. Those three would be great gets for just about every program in the conference and most teams across the nation as well.

Back in May, I did a Q&A with UW Dawg Pound about recruiting and I said at the time that Chris Petersen had a done a good job of securing commitments from the next tier of elite prospects, but hasn't really proved he can compete for the highest level of prospects in California yet. While Eifler may be from northern California and Eletise and Murphy from Hawaii and Arizona respectively, they are three of the best out west in this recruiting cycle in my opinion. Petersen and his staff are doing a great job by putting themselves in position to contend and hopefully land all three.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if Eletise ending up being considered a top five interior lineman in the nation after The Opening next week or if Eifler proved he belongs in the same conversation as USC commit Mique Juarez, Stanford commit Curtis Robinson, and 5 star Caleb Kelly as perhaps the top outside linebacker out west this cycle. I could easily see Murphy emerging as one of the top players in the secondary at the camp as well.

The quantity might not be there for the Huskies right now with only four commitments for 2016, but McGrew along with two in-state studs in safety Taylor Rapp and athlete Brandon Wellington and a tackle in Luke Wattenberg that could be a future all-conference left tackle is a nice core group to build off of. If they eventually add Eifler, Eletise, and Murphy to that group, then that's the kind of talent that can get the Huskies back competing to win the Pac-12 North again.

Petersen likes to talk about OKGs (our kind of guys) and he had a good first full recruiting class back in February filled with them. Next February there could be a lot more prospects that would be considered OKGs for the top programs in the nation and not just UW.