“I hate my phone!” X says.
It does this annoying thing where it silences calls from unknown numbers, so even though he had it in his hand, he wasn’t looking at the screen when the call from the 952 area code came in.
X thought he was prepared. He’d even done a trial run earlier that day. His friends called to see if his volume was loud enough, and he changed his ringtone to the NFL draft theme that chimes whenever a pick is made.
During one of the test runs, his mom, Dorothy, brought out a blowhorn to try to get people to stop talking, but the noise barely made a dent in the buzz created by the 70 or so people at his draft party.
GO DEEPER
Meet Prospect X, the most overlooked player in the 2024 NFL Draft
X’s parents live in a one-story, 980-square-foot home. There are two bedrooms and one bathroom, a kitchen, a living room and a narrow hallway leading to the backyard. It’s the home X and his older sister, Jirah, grew up in together, where they shared a bedroom with a divider down the middle.
It’s the home where his dad, Narciso, would lock X out until he’d burned off some of his limitless energy. He wasn’t allowed to come back inside until he finished building whatever project he’d started — a deer blind or a hammock or a wood carving. It’s the home where X would drink more from the hose than he would from the sink.
Advertisement
His parents like to say they are “sports poor” because they spent most of their money on their kids’ athletic endeavors instead of other things, like a bigger house. “You put aside for that,” Narciso said. “Because that’s what it takes.”
Despite its size, Dorothy says the home was always the hangout house for him and his friends, who constantly tested the limits of how many people could fit comfortably inside. “We always tell people it’s a little house but it’s full of love,” she said.
The house faced the ultimate test on draft weekend.
Fifteen people stayed over Friday night before X’s draft day. He borrowed air mattresses from friends, and Dorothy scrambled to find enough pillows and blankets. X shared his room with a mix of friends and cousins — Mitch, Aiden, Spencer, Cross, Seth, Jagger — and his girlfriend, Reese. It felt like having a sleepover with his best buds. They could barely stop laughing.
“Everybody was twitching and farting,” X said. “I was like a little kid again.”
The next day, X wasn’t loose at all. He’d never felt like this before in his life. He ate only 12 chicken wings all day, well under his eat-as-much-as-humanly-possible diet. “I had a friggin’ empty pit in my stomach,” he said. And when friends and family saw the look on his face, they knew this was a different X. “I was ready for war,” he said. “It was like a pregame feeling.”
On draft day, X’s family and friends packed the house and spilled out into the yard. Dorothy said she originally intended to keep the party small, “but family, they’re coming,” so she hired a food truck and her sister-in-law got a keg and everyone brought their own tumblers and BYOB’d.
During commercial breaks, X alternated between greeting new arrivals and reading Bible passages about staying patient, like Colossians 1:11: “… being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience.” The fourth and fifth rounds passed, but during the sixth round, “the tension just raised and raised and raised until it was almost gonna explode in the room,” said Mitch the Australian punter, X’s best friend.
Advertisement
X sat on the couch, Reese on the floor in front of him, Dorothy next to him wedged into the corner of the couch with Narciso, Jirah on his other side and Mitch at the far end. People were shoulder to shoulder, standing anywhere they could, some perched on chairs, others sitting on top of each other, more lined up in front of the TV on the hardwood floor.
“There was no possible way anyone else could fit inside the house,” Dorothy said.
At one point she felt like she was having heart palpitations, so she sat in front of the fan. It was all too much — too hot, too many people — so she escaped to her empty bedroom, said a quick prayer and then returned to the cramped living room. X patted her knee and told her to relax, “We’re good, Mom.”
In the sixth round, the team headed by his college head coach’s cousin — Lions coach Dan Campbell — picked a defensive tackle. Detroit was the gritty city he’d visited pre-draft.
You dirty dogs, X thought.
At the start of the seventh round, X’s parents started counting how many picks were left: 36, 35, 34 … There was a stretch of four picks where three belonged to teams he visited. His agent, Everett Levy, told him that if he was going to get drafted, it would likely be in that run.
Pick 229, Las Vegas Raiders … cornerback M.J. Devonshire
Pick 230, Minnesota Vikings … guard/center Michael Jurgens
Pick 231, New England Patriots … tight end Jaheim Bell
X received calls and texts throughout the day from different teams telling him they wanted him as a priority free agent if they weren’t able to draft him — a clear sign they wouldn’t be drafting him. But there was one team he hadn’t heard from all week. Their scouts had been in touch with X and his agent regularly, but they’d fallen mysteriously silent. Now they were on the clock again.
X looked down and saw the missed call from the 952 area code. With his Bible in his right hand, he dialed with his left. The phone rang and rang and rang.
Advertisement
“Levi Drake,” a voice on the other end said.
“Talk to me, talk to me,” Levi said. He scooted up to the very edge of the couch cushion and clutched Reese’s arm, nervously rocking back and forth.
“Hey, you’re going to be a Minnesota Viking, man,” said general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah.
Levi leapt up and bellowed: “LET’S GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!” The people inside the house erupted in dancing, jumping and shouting. The living room looked and sounded like a nightclub.
“I thought my house was going to fall down,” Dorothy said.
As many readers correctly guessed in the comments section, Prospect X is Levi Drake Rodriguez, who played defensive tackle for two seasons at Texas A&M Commerce, a program that just finished its second season in Division I FCS. Before that, he played defensive end at Southwestern Assemblies of God University, an NAIA program in Waxahachie, Texas.
The Vikings used their last draft pick on Rodriguez, and they were “sweating it,” said senior VP of player personnel Ryan Grigson, because Las Vegas and New England picked just before them and Minnesota knew he’d visited there.
Grigson, the former Colts GM, was a sixth-round pick himself, and he adores Day 3 of the draft more than probably any other human. When asked about Rodriguez after the pick, he gave reporters an answer so long and so enthusiastic it took up nearly an entire page of the transcript. He told multiple anecdotes: how Rodriguez loved to get to the facility early, sometimes sleeping there the night before, to be “soaking wet” with sweat by the time his teammates were still wiping the crust out of their eyes; how he duct-taped his cleats together as a kid to keep playing.
“I was obviously pretty giddy afterward because, to me, (Rodriguez) is the root of what I feel like we’re trying to promote here on Day 3,” Grigson said Monday. “It’s really the scout’s day and they just need to come with conviction and evidence and sell the players that they love. The GM’s got to feel that to take them.”
Advertisement
The scout that came with conviction this time was Blaine Gramer, Minnesota’s southwest area scout. He covers a geographically massive and football-rich territory — Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi — and visits about 50 colleges each season to check in on prospects. Gramer scouted Dolphins nickel corner Kader Kohou when he went undrafted out of Commerce in 2022, but the school wasn’t on Gramer’s radar this season until he worked his way through some cold calls to Texas schools in October.
He asked Commerce’s coaching staff if they had any players. They said they thought they had one. Gramer was skeptical. “Everyone says that,” he said. “It’s a long shot.”
Still, he took a quick glance at the long shot’s tape. Rodriguez “flashed enough” that Gramer kicked him over to scouting associate Michelle Mankoff. She’d do a full evaluation and let him know if this Commerce DT was worth his time. “And she said, ‘Yeah, you gotta watch this guy,'” Gramer said.
Gramer saw Rodriguez in person for the first time during the Tropical Bowl in January. He was looking to answer two big questions. First, size: Rodriguez played in the 280s last season, and he needed to get bigger if he wanted an NFL future at defensive tackle. Second, how would he fare against better competition?
Rodriguez weighed in at 297 at the Tropical Bowl (he’s now up to 306), then won game MVP honors with three-and-a-half sacks. It wasn’t NFL-level competition, but he dominated against Power 5 offensive linemen.
That was enough for Gramer to “shoot my shot.” He passed Rodriguez up the chain to college scouting director Mike Sholiton, national scout David Wiliams and area scout Steve Sabo, who cross-checks defensive linemen.
“It’s really hard for a scout to push for somebody who’s off the radar,” Sholiton said. “All-in when you don’t have all the information … you’re really sticking your neck out.”
Advertisement
Gramer knew if he didn’t do it then, Rodriguez would have little chance to get drafted because there wouldn’t be enough time for every layer of the team’s scouting operation to review him. “If you don’t get on guys like this early enough it’s hard to get to a point where you want to draft them,” Grigson said.
Gramer told them all to watch Rodriguez, but he was careful not to tell them anything else. “I don’t want to put preconceived thoughts in their heads, so I don’t want to tell them what my grade is or tell them that I love him,” he said.
They all liked him, and when the Vikings scouting staff discussed Rodriguez during February draft meetings, they passed him further up the chain, this time to Grigson.
“It didn’t matter which game you threw on, the guy played with violence, he played with twitch,” Grigson said. “I knew it was gonna get Kwesi’s attention when he showed multiple ways to win as a pass rusher coming from an NAIA school, a former D2 school that became a Division I school. What he’s done on his own is pretty remarkable in terms of refining his game.”
After Grigson watched the tape, he texted Adofo-Mensah.
“Grigson is probably the most excitable person I’ve ever met in my entire life when it comes to football players,” Adofo-Mensah said. “He is now in my office, in my front door, asking me to stop whatever I’m doing to watch this player.”
Grigson also told head coach Kevin O’Connell and defensive coordinator Brian Flores. “That conviction is contagious,” Grigson said.
The Vikings’ analytics department ran Rodriguez through their program, which identifies different “signals” that determine a successful NFL player at each position, like athleticism, production and mental makeup. Football quantitative methods analyst Chris French declined to share specific information, but Rodriguez’s results matched what Gramer loved on the field, and the analytics report helped ease the scouting staff’s concerns about how the small-school player might transition to the NFL.
Advertisement
“He definitely showed some promise and potential to outperform his expectations based off of where he’s coming from,” French said.
Gramer knows that social media and football analytics companies often unearth anonymous prospects these days, but he was still annoyed when he saw 13 other teams come to Commerce for Rodriguez’ pro day. “It’s hard to hide guys now in today’s world,” he said.
When Rodriguez visited the Vikings in early April, Adofo-Mensah said he “caught fire in this building, just a positive force of energy.” Gramer said Rodriguez did pass rush moves in the hallway and grabbed a new drink every time he walked by a cooler, setting a record for bathroom visits. He was amazed by all the resources and wanted to try everything.
About a week and a half before the draft, the Vikings scouting staff had a meeting where each scout presented a player that he thought should be on the team. Gramer presented Rodriguez and came ready with tape and plenty of anecdotes because Adofo-Mensah is a big anecdote guy. He talked about how Levi transferred to Commerce without having a connection to anyone there. He just showed up at their football camp and earned a half scholarship.
But Gramer didn’t need to hype up Rodriguez again. They’d already talked about him enough.
(Video courtesy of Minnesota Vikings)
While his family got ready for church on the morning after the draft, Rodriguez played video after video of the Vikings pregame Gjallarhorn and Skol chant. With his long brown hair, he should look the part running out of the tunnel with the fiery torches blazing.
“I can’t wait to hear the Skol chant,” he said, smiling wide.
He’s ready for rookie camp, but first, he’ll go back to campus to pack up and attend the end-of-year ceremony for the student-athletes. “It’s gonna be awesome to walk on that campus knowing that I’ve accomplished something, and I’m setting a foundation that it is possible,” he said.
Advertisement
Neither Dorothy nor Narciso finished college, and they were determined that both their kids would graduate with degrees. Levi struggled to focus at times with ADHD, but he went to class and got his work done. When Levi was a junior in high school, Dorothy said she went to the counselor’s office to ask about SAT information and college scholarships. The counselor told her, “Mrs. Rodriguez, college isn’t for everyone.” She ignored the counselor because that wasn’t an option.
The night her son was drafted, she cried thinking about how far he’d come. He’d accomplished two goals, becoming a professional football player and graduating with a criminal justice degree. “I never doubted him,” she said. “I never, never doubted my son could do it.”
Gramer has one more anecdote to share. On Levi’s visit to Minnesota, he saw someone enter the building with their own code. So he asked his host scout, Sabo: If he wound up a Viking, would he get his own code? “Is that how I get in?”
Yeah, Sabo said.
“So, if I have my own code, I can come here wherever I want?”
Yeah, Sabo said.
“Oh man,” Levi said. “I’m gonna be here all the time. I might even sleep here.”
Sounded familiar.
(Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic; photos courtesy of TAMUC Athletic Communications)