One player’s unique path to draft
SUNDAY, APRIL 22, 2018
The printers were massive, Nathan Shepherd said. Probably 25- or 30-feet long, whirring as they spit out 50 hot strips of cardboard in a row — flattened cartons so sharp they would leave thin cuts on his forearms.
His job at this MeadWestvaco packaging facility in Toronto was to stack the folded-down boxes into towers more than 6 feet high, move them off the line, bundle them in plastic wrap and get them ready to be loaded onto trucks. They were often the future homes of 24-packs of Coca-Cola, or the beginnings of a six-pack of beer.
“Bud Light, Miller Light, Corona, whatever it might be,” Shepherd said
This wasn’t the only job Shepherd had in his two years away from football, but it was probably the most difficult. He said he was working 12-hour shifts, sometimes overnight from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. He was living with his parents in a suburb of Toronto — biking to work, lifting weights, saving money and waiting for another opportunity to play football.
Now, a little less than four years later, he’s emerged as a projected second- or third-round pick in the NFL draft.
Though he’s a relative unknown even among football fans, Shepherd has arguably the most winding journey of any of this year’s prospects. He worked full-time at a plant nursery and electrical construction company in British Columbia. He paid his own way and walked on at Fort Hays State University, a Division-II school in western Kansas. And then he kept working, bouncing at bars after home games and working other odd jobs to stay financially afloat.
At 24, he is one of the oldest players in this draft class.
“The number-one question the NFL asks (is), ‘Do you love football?’” said Fort Hays wide receivers coach Al McCray, who recruited Shepherd. “Read this kid’s story and you tell me if this kid loves football or not.”
Shepherd didn’t just want to play football; he wanted to play American football. So nearly seven years ago, he decided to enroll at Simon Fraser University because it was the only NCAAaffiliated school in Canada, even though it was more than 2,700 miles from Toronto.
He redshirted in 2011 and showed promise in nine games in 2012, but he had to leave the team — and withdraw from school — in 2013 because of what he described as financial issues. So he did what anyone else would do. “I started working at a plant nursery,” Shepherd said.
His brief seasonal job at NATS Nursery amounted to packing up orders of potted plants, transporting them on a dune buggy and loading them onto an 18-wheeler, Shepherd said. When winter arrived, he said he switched to electrical construction, working on the wiring in new townhouse developments.
Then, a little less than a year after entering the workforce, Shepherd decided to move back home with his parents to cut costs. Paul Watkins, a family friend and personal trainer, said Shepherd was “broken.”
“His dream was to play football, and it didn’t work out at Simon Fraser,” said Watkins, who helps run Football In Training, a training group outside Toronto. “It seemed like that was the end of football for him.”
But Shepherd said his mindset never wavered. Even as he picked up shifts at the packaging factory in April and took online classes through Northeast Texas Community College, he was still in the gym with Watkins, who offered to train Shepherd for free.
“All the other dreams or passions that I might have had were things that could be pursued after football,” Shepherd said. “Football is a blink of an eye. I’m like, ‘You’re going to regret if you don’t go back. So let’s go back and give it our best shot.’ “
Unsurprisingly, McCray said, Shepherd has prepared for the draft much like any other employee would prepare for a job interview. When scouts visited him, he’d ask for their business cards. If he knew he was going to be meeting with a specific scout, he’d research his or her background.
“Like, who does that?” McCray said. “That’s Nate. Everything about him is business.”
Regardless of when he’s drafted, Shepherd will become just the sixth player from Fort Hays to make it to the NFL since 1938. It will be a moment of validation and relief, seven years in the making — and it’s clear he won’t take his new job for granted.