He was selected in the sixth round of the 1989 NFL draft, and played eight seasons for the New York Jets of which he was a starter for six.

Out of Kimball High School in Dallas, Texas, Washington went to the University of Texas-El Paso on a basketball scholarship.

[1] In his senior year of 1988–89, the Idaho Vandals won Big Sky conference titles in both sports and advanced to the NCAA postseason: the I-AA semifinals in football and the Division I basketball tournament.

[8] In 2017, he was part of a lawsuit filed against Attorney General Jeff Sessions, seeking to overturn the classification of cannabis as a Schedule I drug.

[11][12] In November 2021, Washington began hosting an online educational show about cannabis named 5th Quarter.