It’s been an uphill climb for former Oklahoma football defensive back Parnell Motley, but on Friday he proved a lot of people wrong.
Today is the day that NFL teams need to trim their rosters for the start of the 2020 season to the league limit of 53 players, and Motley, an undrafted, free agent and a former Oklahoma Sooners is one of the lucky ones to make the cut and become part of the season-opening roster of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
In case you’re not aware, that is the same team that acquired former New England Patriots’ star quarterback Tom Brady, himself a free agent, in the offseason.
Motley, who last season was playing cornerback for Big 12 champion Oklahoma. was hopeful of hearing his name called in the NFL Draft this past spring, but that did not happen, to the surprise of Sooner head coach Lincoln Riley and a few other NFL draft experts. In fact, just four Oklahoma Sooners were selected in the 2020 NFL Draft, two of them first-rounders (WR CeeDee Lamb and LB Kenneth Murray) a third-rounder in QB Jalen Hurts and DL Neville Gallimore in the fourth round.
In his senior season at Oklahoma, Motley led the Sooners with 13 pass breakups. He had 33 PBU’s for his career at OU, which places him fifth in program history. The four-year Sooner cornerback ranked second in the FBS last season, allowing completed passes just 43 percent of the time the ball was thrown in his direction.
Not only was Motley not drafted, but he also was uninvited to the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis, which serves as a showcase for the most promising NFL Draft prospects at every position. So Motley’s journey to the NFL started out with two strikes against him.
Motley signed a free-agent contract with Tampa Bay immediately after the NFL Draft, and he has impressed head coach Bruce Arians since he first arrived in training camp. On the very first day of training camp practice, Motley picked off a pass by Tom Brady, and he intercepted another Brady pass the following week.
"“Keep making plays every single day, he’s going to get a job,” Arians told the Tampa Bay Times. That’s what the hard-working, former OU defensive back did."
Even though he had to do it the hard way, not being a draft pick and all, Motley accomplished the task he set out to do: to continue his football career at the next level.
Motley is a gamer. He should do well in the NFL, and it wouldn’t surprise me that we will be hearing his name for a number of years to come.