Brock Wright was lounging around The Henry hotel in Dearborn two years ago watching the NFL draft with some of his Detroit Lions teammates.
Quarterbacks Tim Boyle and David Blough were in the room. Tight end Shane Zylstra was there, too. So was wide receiver Tom Kennedy.
“There was six of us in there and all of us were undrafted,” Wright recalled last week. “I said why are we even watching this thing?”
Wright, an undrafted free agent out of Notre Dame in 2021, just finished his third season as the Lions’ No. 2 tight end and signed a three-year, $12 million deal to stay with the team as a restricted free agent this offseason.
Boyle and Blough, who went undrafted in 2018 and 2019, respectively, spent parts of two seasons battling to be Jared Goff’s backup. Blough retired to start his coaching career this offseason, while Boyle is currently with the Houston Texans. Kennedy played pro lacrosse before joining the Lions as a priority free agent in 2019. And Zylstra originally signed with the Minnesota Vikings as a UDFA the same year Wright came to Detroit in 2021.
Wright, Kennedy and Zylstra are three of 22 undrafted free agents on the Lions’ current 65-man roster, proving Wright’s point that the draft is just the beginning of a player’s NFL journey and not the only entry into the league.
“I didn’t really have the highest expectations (in the 2021 draft),” Wright said. “I knew that with my college stats and career that it probably would be tough to get drafted. I did perform fairly well at pro day, which helped me get some eyes on me. But really my whole goal was just to be able to show up to an OTAs, show people what I could do and then just take it day by day. That’s what ended up happening and fortunately it worked out.”
Goff was at the other end of the spectrum when he entered the NFL as the No. 1 pick in the 2016 draft, similar to where USC quarterback Caleb Williams is this week.
