![Tennessee Titans]()
The Tennessee Titans' social media team really has it together. Their
side-splitting interviews on Broadway in Nashville was the stuff of NFL schedule release legend. Now they're treading into the underdog stories that we don't hear enough about in professional football.
In an awesome behind-the-scenes video, five players on the bubble of the Titans' 53-man roster found out in sit-down meetings with GM Ran Carthon and head coach Brian Callahan that they made the final cut. They got to say hello to the camera and all the Tennessee fans out there by the end:
https://twitter.com/titans/status/1829229559633588297
I could talk more about the contents of the video, but this whole setup had me thinking about these guys' lives from a bigger-picture perspective. Felt like it was worth diving into some of their stories, and tie that into some of the NFL's greatest successes as a means of underscoring how bizarrely serendipitous life can be. Please bear with me. I think this will be worth it.
Let's begin with guard Andrew Rupcich. Talk about willing the life you want into existence. Guess where he played NCAA football?
Culver-Stockton College. Yeah. Stood out so much there that he somehow landed on NFL Draft radars. Was invited to the Combine. Ultimately went undrafted anyway.
That was back in 2022. Tennessee has had one of the worst offensive lines in the league the past two seasons. They attacked that in the draft with first-round picks in Peter Skoronski last year and JC Latham this year. Rupcich was released during final roster cuts in '22 and '23, relegated to the practice squad in perpetuity until Week 10 of the 2023 campaign. The new coaching staff evidently saw enough to keep Rupcich on the active roster this time around, even considering him for a starting spot.
https://twitter.com/JustinM_NFL/status/1828530783776051698
Right tackle John Ojukwu was an undrafted free agent signee out of Boise State in 2023. He stayed on the practice squad as a rookie before finally being promoted to the active roster as a starter on December 23. Tennessee had already drafted a tackle in the sixth round, Jaelyn Duncan out of Maryland. He could've been a swing tackle and sent Ojukwu back to the p-squad or to another team. But nope. On the active roster he stays for Week 1.
Rookie seventh-round pick James Williams is from the Miami Hurricanes, yet he had to convert from safety to linebacker upon arriving in the NFL. Despite that steep learning curve, Williams did enough to make the 53. Outstanding job by him.
Thanks to the extra year of college football eligibility from COVID, ex-Temple tight end David Martin-Robinson was able to develop another year in the Owls program. Prior to breaking out to a degree in 2023, the highest accolade on his resume was an independent publisher naming him as a
fourth-team all-conference selection. Now, Martin-Robinson is the third or fourth tight end on the Tennessee Titans.
Last but not least, we have Thomas Odukoya, an International Pathway Program prospect and native of the Netherlands. Odukoya moved to the U.S. to play football and take it seriously, going through stints at two different community colleges before playing at Eastern Michigan. Wanna see a man make an NFL roster in one play? Here you go:
https://twitter.com/NFL/status/1827800414265458785
Why am I spelling all this out? Because literally at any point along the way, any of these young men could've given up. So could countless others who've flourished in the NFL.
We often get a snapshot of peoples' lives on social media
after they've accomplished some major life milestone. Maybe nowadays some athletes post their workout videos and what not, but in my lifetime, I've literally seen two of the three best quarterbacks in the NFL come pretty much out of nowhere, with little fanfare, to ascend among the greatest I've ever seen. The same goes for a certain Dallas Cowboys QB and famed CBS broadcaster.
Of course I'm referring to Josh Allen, Joe Burrow, and Tony Romo. To rattle them off quickly: Allen went the community college route before getting
one offer from Wyoming to play college football at the highest level. He completed barely over 56% of his passes. Burrow couldn't get on the field but for occasional mop-up duty in three years at Ohio State. Romo threw 16 interceptions in his final season at Eastern Illinois before going undrafted in 2002.
What was Allen's life plan, say, during his second year at Wyoming? What was Burrow intending to do as he rode the bench all those years in Columbus? Could Romo conceived of being an NFL starter someday when zero teams felt good enough about him to invest a seventh-round pick in his services?
https://twitter.com/AndrewBrandt/status/1784365686745104690
Did any of their families
really believe such unfathomable success was possible? The moral of these stories might be: If you have a five-year plan for your life, toss it out.
Think about it this way: In Allen's first season at Wyoming, he threw a grand total of four passes. Five years later, he'd go on to record the highest NFL passer rating (149.0) in a single postseason. Burrow's jump in a five-year span: Sparse garbage time snaps at Ohio State, to playing in the freaking Super Bowl, with a natty, a Heisman Trophy at LSU, and a horrendous knee injury in between. Big-time programs other than LSU
were interested in him once he mulled transferring — as a third-stringer.
https://twitter.com/brgridiron/status/1231959534589169665
Seriously, Tony Romo going from an Eastern Illinois UDFA to the quarterback for America's Team? And then becoming one of the most celebrated, handsomely-paid sportscasters of his generation? Dream big, kids, but what on
Earth had to come together for all that to come to fruition? Romo of course deserves credit for working his tail off, patiently awaiting his opportunity with the Cowboys. But like...that sh*t is just crazy. Right?
My point is, it's amazing how many different forking paths Allen, Burrow, and Romo could've taken at any given point in their lives to not wind up at their current destinations. The same applies for these five Titans players who rose from greater obscurity to make an NFL roster over some guys from much bigger college programs, and some established NFL veterans.
You just never know what putting your head down and working hard can bring about. There's so much luck involved. Who you meet and all that. But I don't know. Although Allen, Burrow, and Romo keep progressing to make unrelatable amounts of money, achieve unrelatable amounts of fame, and post unrelatable resumes of football greatness, their origin stories are, in fact, the special stuff that makes NFL dreams come true.
Somehow, some way, via some serious cosmic serendipity, these Titans players were in the right places at the right time and worked harder than they probably thought possible to bring them to the point where they made Tennessee's 2024 roster. Every step along the way, Allen, Burrow, and Romo kept toiling away, somehow keeping faith that they'd kick the door in when their biggest opportunities came knocking. And boy did they ever.
Having enough athleticism to play college football is a rarity. Beating the odds from
there just to make it to the NFL in some capacity is another self-contained Cinderella story. Making a final 53-man roster means you're in the top fraction of a fraction of football players on the planet. To then be elite from
there is almost impossible, especially when you consider where Allen, Burrow, and Romo were at certain points on their respective journeys. This may only be fascinating for me to contemplate. Whatever. The more I zoomed out from this Titans story, the more in awe I was of all its larger implications.
