MOBILE, Ala. — Here’s the first thing you notice about Tyren Montgomery when watching Senior Bowl practices this week: He moves through the process like someone who belongs, like someone who has done this before.<\/p>\n
This is my eighth Senior Bowl, and it’s not uncommon to see players from small schools show up here and look completely overwhelmed. Montgomery has looked more like a No. 1 receiver from a Power Four\u00a0program than “that guy from Division III John Carroll University whose football backstory is almost too much to believe.”<\/p>\n
And that’s what makes this all the more remarkable.<\/p>\n
Montgomery didn’t start playing football as a 5-year-old with dreams of making it to the NFL<\/a>.<\/p>\n “You know, I’ve only been playing this game since I was a junior,” he admitted.<\/p>\n Wait, a junior in high school, right?<\/p>\n “A junior in college. I played basketball in high school. I went to LSU<\/a> for basketball.”<\/p>\n And yet, here he is, on the turf at Hancock Whitney Stadium — stacking releases, winning one-on-ones and forcing all of us to return to the same question: How did he get here this fast?<\/p>\n Hoop dreams<\/p>\n Montgomery’s athletic foundation was built on a basketball court in The Woodlands, Texas, just north of Houston. And basketball wasn’t just his first sport — it was his plan.<\/p>\n “I played point guard and two guard,” Montgomery said. “I could shoot it. I could really shoot.”<\/p>\n Basketball led him to LSU, where he planned to walk on, but life had other plans. During his first semester, Montgomery’s mother fell ill. It wasn’t long before COVID shut everything down, including any sense of certainty about his future.<\/p>\n “Basketball wasn’t in the vision anymore,” Montgomery said. “Everything was shut down. I had to figure out what I wanted to do with my life.”<\/p>\n He came back home to Houston unsure of his next step, unsure whether sports even fit into it anymore. He even considered getting a real job.<\/p>\n Then, as often happens, a mundane moment — for Montgomery, a game of catch — changed his life.<\/p>\n The backyard<\/p>\n Montgomery’s younger brother Kam, now a quarterback at North Greenville University<\/a>, was the one who first put a football in his hands. One afternoon, the two were tossing it around in the backyard, passing time more than anything else.<\/p>\n “My brother just looked at me and said, ‘Bro, you might as well do this,'” Montgomery said with a laugh. “‘You don’t really got nothing else going on right now.'”<\/p>\n At first, it sounded ridiculous. Montgomery had never played football. No high school tape. Never even put on pads. Just God-given instincts and athleticism honed on the basketball court.<\/p>\n But the more he thought about it, the more it made sense — in part because there was no Plan B.<\/p>\n Starting from square one<\/p>\n Montgomery enrolled at the University of Houston, hoping to walk on. But COVID-era roster crunches ended that idea before it could begin.<\/p>\n “There were just no spots,” he said. “A lot of guys got that COVID year and came back [to school].”<\/p>\n Montgomery, who is the walking embodiment of the Stoic philosophy, “The obstacle is the way,” was undeterred. Instead of giving up, he improvised.<\/p>\n He filmed himself running routes on air, posted the clips online and hoped someone — anyone — would notice. Those clips found their way to Eddy Franca, a Miami-based flag football coach, who invited Montgomery to a tournament in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n Montgomery showed up — and showed out enough to earn an invitation to pursue Olympic flag football, but that path came with a caveat: forfeiting his college eligibility.<\/p>\n “I didn’t start playing football to play flag football,” he said. “I wanted to play real football.”<\/p>\n Franca then connected Montgomery with Deuce Schwartz, who was at Missouri<\/a> at the time (he’s now with the 49ers). Schwartz forwarded Montgomery’s flag-football highlight reel to college coaches across the country.<\/p>\n “They all liked me,” Montgomery said. “But they were scared. I never put on shoulder pads before. And that was valid.”<\/p>\n Eventually, that leap of faith came from Nicholls State.<\/p>\n Learning on the fly<\/p>\n