Ex-basketball player hungry for NFL shot
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. – He’s hungry. Bayron Matos is hungry to take his first snap in an NFL game, hungry to make an NFL roster, hungry to put on a Dolphins uniform for real.
Except when he was a 17-year-old kid, Matos wasn’t repeating the words “I’m hungry” all the time because his stomach was grumbling.
Those were the only English words he knew. Matos had flown over from the Dominican Republic and landed in Tennessee to be with his host family and chase a college scholarship. If this doesn’t sound like the story of a future NFL player, you don’t know the half of it.
That scholarship he was chasing wasn’t in football. It was as a power forward in basketball. He’s now 6-foot-7 and 313 pounds and can run the 40 in 4.88. Back in the Dominican Republic, he hit the low 90s with his fastball.
Football? He eventually discovered it.
Matos’ career consists of about 11 snaps
His career at the University of South Florida consisted of, by his count, about 11 snaps.
“I got an opportunity to play a little bit and got the feel, man,” he said Friday. “Football is a beautiful sport, man. I love the game. It defines me as a person. I like to talk, as you can tell. To scream. I like to be loud. I love that.”
Matos, 23, seamlessly transitioned from Spanish to English while talking with reporters after his first rookie camp workout. His table was surrounded by media members curious to hear from a player unlike any other in camp. Matos soaked up the attention, a smile rarely leaving his face.
“Man, it feels good to be here, all this love. Look at y’all,” he said. “That’s good. I love that. Man, it’s opportunity. They gave me the opportunity to be here. I’m really grateful for that. Not a lot of people take a shot on a guy that never played the sport before. And what the organization saw, one thing: the work ethic. Respect. And give everything I have on the field.”
Matos is one of 15 players in NFL camps as part of the league’s International Player Pathway Program. Established in 2017, it gives players a chance to earn a roster spot while not counting against the 16-man practice squad
limit during the season. Five such players have been elevated to active rosters in the past.
Matos would not be the first Dominican to make a roster or appear in a game, but he is the first Pathway player signed from the Dominican Republic.
The Dolphins have Matos at offensive tackle, meaning he’s working under line coach Butch Barry, as intense an assistant as there is on Mike McDaniel’s staff.
“I love that boy,” Matos said. “I love him. Love the energy. He’ll put you to work, for sure.”
Appearing in game ‘one of my goals in life’
Matos isn’t the first international player to work with the Dolphins. Brazilian Durval Queiroz Neto also spent a few years practicing here. But Matos doesn’t want to just practice. He wants to play.
“That’s one of my goals in life,” he said. “I want to be, first of all, one of the first Dominicans – the best Dominican to play in the NFL.”
That wasn’t the plan when he arrived in the United States six years ago. Plans change. So much has changed since he was to “I’m hungry” what “I am Groot” was to that “Guardians of the Galaxy” character.
“So that’s the first word I learned in English,” he said. “So every time somebody used to ask me something or whatever, I say, ‘I’m hungry.’ ‘B, how are you?’ I say, ‘I’m hungry.’ ‘B, are you going to school today?’ ‘I’m hungry.’
“That’s my answer to everything for like seven months.”
It’s his answer today.
Just in a totally unexpected context.