Sep. 25—PULLMAN — Paul Hutson III likes to say he does best with visual reminders, with illustrations of the goals he's trying to reach. It's the reason his X profile picture is the Bronko Nagurski Trophy — awarded to the nation's top defensive player. It's the reason he keeps a photo of the NFL draft stage handy on his phone.
It's also the reason why, in the Gesa Field locker room after he helped his Washington State defense shut down FCS Duquesne last weekend, he pulled out his phone. He did a Google search for photos of Noah Fifita, Arizona's quarterback, found one he liked and saved it .
He then made it his lock screen wallpaper, swapping out a photo of Carson Camp, the quarterback that WSU had just taken down.
"It's just constant visual reminders of things helping me achieve my goals that I set out for myself," Hutson said.
You see, Hutson has started a tradition for himself this season, his final year of college football. Before the season, he made a list of all the quarterbacks WSU was likely to face this fall: Demond Williams Jr. at Washington, Avery Johnson at Kansas State, Camp at Duquesne and Fifita at Arizona, which is set to visit Pullman for a primetime matchup on CBS this Saturday.
At defensive line, where Hutson has started each of the Cougars' first three games, the quarterback represents the goal he's trying to reach. By now, Hutson knows the drill — he's playing his fifth season at his fourth school, looking to hit the double-digit mark in career sacks — but he likes to envision the specific quarterback his team will be facing every week, the jersey he'll be wearing, exactly what he looks like.
So after each of WSU's first three games of the season, Hutson — "P3" to all his teammates and coaches — has picked up his phone and completed the same routine, the same as his goal on the field. He finds a photo of the quarterback of the upcoming opponent, saves it to his phone, then makes it his wallpaper, subbing out a photo of the quarterback the Cougars just played.
"I'm just a visual learner, visual memory guy," Hutson said. "So everything I see, if I write it, I see it. If I look at it, I see it, and I just always can remember, 'Hey, let's get back to the center and remember what the goal is.' So that's just something that helps me personally just know what my goals are whenever things might be up or down, you know?"
"That sounds right," WSU coach Kirby Moore added. "Paul is locked in every week to the objective on hand, and he has a great amount of energy every practice. He loves playing the game of football, and I think that's contagious to his teammates as well."
So far, Hutson has collected four total tackles on the season, three of the solo variety. Those may not sound like convincing numbers, but the job of an interior defensive lineman is often thankless, so consider this: Hutson has earned a Pro Football Focus defensive grade of 71.1, which ranks second on the team among players with 80 snaps. He's also posted a run defense grade of 78.7, tops on the team using the same criteria.
In other words, Hutson is making an impact that's equal parts invaluable and invisible. He's anchoring a WSU defensive line that has looked like one of the team's best position groups, on either side of the ball. And he's doing it all slightly undersized, listed at 6-foot-1 and 270 pounds.
"My three game experience here has been great," Hutson said. "Definitely for a senior season, it's been everything I've imagined — playing in those big atmospheres, those big-time games is the reason I came here. I feel like just being able to play in those games has been really fun, and just experiencing it with the guys, to see how hard we worked all summer and just everything come together and us growing each and every week, to see us grow from week one to week three has been great."
To get here, Hutson has had to follow a winding path. As a three-star prospect in the class of 2022, Hutson figured he would land at a power-conference school right out of IMG Academy, widely regarded as one of the country's top talent hubs. Instead, Hutson took his talents to FCS Campbell, then transferred to Austin Peay, only to redshirt in 2023. Then in 2024, he returned to Campbell, which he parlayed into a spot at Marshall.
When last winter arrived, Hutson was on the move again. But this time, he was looking for something different, knowing this season would be his last. He wanted something meaningful, something family-oriented, something that would allow him to play his final year feeling satisfied with the way his career had unfolded.
So he got in touch with a longtime friend.
"Yo, bro, what's up?" Hutson texted WSU defensive tackle Kaden Beatty. "What you trying to do?"
Turns out, Hutson and Beatty go way back, all the way back to playing Pop Warner in eastern Virginia where they grew up. They played on the same teams, in the same camps. They would get done with a long day of school or practice, then head back to Beatty's place, where they would jump on the trampoline or play Madden, which Hutson says he's always been better at than Beatty .
This winter, though, Beatty was ready to reunite with his Virginia buddy. He helped get Hutson's film in front of Cougar coaches, Hutson said, which put the wheels in motion. Moore took Beatty's word into consideration, he said, and besides, the Cougars wanted to find players with proven production on the field. Hutson checked all those boxes.
"It's just great to see how far we've grown, both as players and just as men," Hutson said. "It's great to finish my last year and be able to play with him, alongside with him, train with him, work with him, and just achieve all our goals together."
Still, to hear Hutson tell it, he hasn't always felt so at home. It's taken a toll on him, moving from city to city, school to school, quite literally every year of his life for the past four years. He's always harbored confidence internally, he says, but showing it outwardly has required another level of conviction that he didn't always have.
For example, he says, it took him some time to crawl out of his shell. "You're always the new person," Hutson said. Besides, back when he was a freshman at Campbell, Hutson was learning the value of humility at the same time. When he was coming out of IMG Academy, he envisioned himself going to a power conference school right away, the way alumni like Francis Mauigoa, Kaytron Allen and Carnell Tate did.
But Hutson landed at Campbell, an FCS program that didn't play its first season of football until 2008. Then he went to Austin Peay, another FCS club with an all-time winning percentage of just 37%. "I went to the number one school in the country," Hutson said, referring to IMG Academy, "and going to an FCS school was a humbling experience for me."
"So I feel like that was the best opportunity for me to grow at that time in my journey," Hutson added, "was to be humble and learn like, hey, continue to work, because when your time is called, it'll be called."
At Marshall, Hutson says, he finally got the kinds of opportunities he always imagined for himself. Playing in all 12 games, he made 40 tackles, including 6 1/2 for loss and 3 1/2 sacks. He also reeled in two interceptions. He also posted 21 pressures, which ranked in the top 30 in the Sun Belt that season.
"You're on the stage. You're able to fully put your talents on display," Hutson said. "I feel like that was part of my journey as well of being able to show just my talents and everything I've done over the years, and have it on that stage."
All of which seems to lead to this question: Is Hutson happy with the odyssey his career has turned into? He's lived in six different states: Virginia, Florida, North Carolina, West Virginia, Tennessee and now Washington. He's gone to one school, left for a season and returned the next. He says it's helped him adapt, helped him feel comfortable in just about any situation he finds himself in.
But in Hutson's eyes, how has his career lived up to the vision he saw for himself at the beginning? He doesn't regret anything, he says, and he believes he's taken a little something from each stop and applied it to his life as a whole. Now in his final year, he has arrived at the type of place he always visualized for himself.
He's found he's quite skilled at that kind of thing.
"As it stands right now, I'm definitely happy and I know that the younger version of myself would be very proud," Hutson said. "Just knowing that I've done a lot of things that I've always put my mind out to, and I've set out to play at the highest level of football, make big plays in big-time games. The multitude of tackles and sacks and touchdowns, all those things. Just being able to have those things in my college career, I can say that I would definitely look back and be proud in knowing that it all came from the work that I invested in at a young age and just continued to hone in on and only get better at. So yeah, I would definitely say that at this moment, I'm proud for sure."
