The emotion \u2014 and everything that Mike Washington Jr. went through to get to the NFL combine in the first place \u2014 hit him after the 40-yard dash. He\u2019d just run an unofficial 4.33 in February, a number that would soon become official and rank first among running backs. Sitting on the sideline, Washington, who went from the University at Buffalo to New Mexico State to Arkansas, covered his face with both hands as he started crying.<\/p>\n
Washington recalled thinking, \u201cI finally got my chance to prove everybody wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n
If there were ever any doubts, any lingering \u201cbut\u201d questions because of his unique path, that sprint allowed people to think, \u201cOK, s\u2013t, there\u2019s no more buts anymore,\u201d Tony Sanchez, his head coach at New Mexico State, said.<\/p>\n
The way Washington leveraged his way to becoming a lead running back in the SEC \u2014 and someone regarded by most as a top five back in the 2026 draft \u2014 has turned him into the modern college football success story. The way the 6-foot-2, 228-pound back maximized the combine captured the reason it exists in the first place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The emotion \u2014 and everything that Mike Washington Jr. went through to get to the NFL combine in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":585292,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[436],"tags":[5925,49,48,514,1044,198781,82,2089],"class_list":{"0":"post-585291","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-arkansas-razorbacks","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-nfl","12":"tag-nfl-draft","13":"tag-nfl-draft-2026","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-sports-plus"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=585291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585291\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/585292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=585291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=585291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=585291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}