Missouri S&T to the Chiefs: The story of Tershawn Wharton’s unconventional path to NFL
In small-town Macon, Missouri, a high school football coach often tells stories about a former athlete from a previous job. He shares them so often, in fact, that he wonders if his players have grown tired of hearing about a guy they’ve never met. But who cares?
It’s just that every time coach Jameson Allen wants to illustrate a point, he feels he has the perfect example. The weight room immersion? The importance of academics? The desire and drive? Allen would prefer to show the end result, not simply talk about it, and the final product points to one guy.
Tershawn Wharton.
He’s now a rookie defensive lineman with the Chiefs, a man who spent most of his life assuming talent alone would not get him to the NFL because, frankly, many didn’t think he had enough of it. But now that he’s here, he’s excelling — Pro Football Focus ranks him as the third-best defensive rookie in football.
And here’s where we remind you that he went undrafted in April.
“Nobody knew the potential that I had,” Wharton said. “I feel like it was an opportunity that I just took and ran with.”
Wharton traveled the more unusual path to the NFL. On paper, anyway. Those who knew him best always saw this coming because they knew he always saw it coming. And dare they doubt him.
Wharton couldn’t find Division I interest as a senior at University City in St. Louis, even as the offers rolled in for a teammate on the defensive line who would wind up at Oklahoma. He settled at Missouri S&T, a school better known for churning out engineers than football players.
“No matter what people think about you,” said Allen, who coached Wharton at University City. “if you work harder than you think need to work, dreams can come true. He is the prototypical example.”
It wasn’t that anyone thought badly of him. They just didn’t think of him at all.
Until he made them.
And that’s a good place to tell you how he cracked the Chiefs’ roster as an undrafted rookie.
‘Tremendous effort’
The Chiefs were on Wharton about as long as any NFL team. They had scouts watching him soon after his breakout sophomore season at Missouri S&T — a school-record 21 tackles for loss and 13 1/2 sacks — and the in-person reviews backed the numbers.
Their scouts liked him, enough to convince the Chiefs front office and coaches to invest more time. And when Wharton didn’t hear his name called during NFL Draft weekend, the Chiefs offered him a deal.
But before setting expectations that he would contribute as a rookie — or even make the roster, for that matter — they wanted proof he belonged.
On the first day of practice, Chiefs general manager Brett Veach made the rounds on the field, position group to position group, and spotted Wharton.
“He was really twitchy, athletic, worked his tail off,” Veach said.
OK, Veach thought, but let’s see how he does once we put the pads on.
Wharton passed that, too.
OK, Veach thought, but let’s move him up against the first- and second-stringers in practice and see if he can still hold his own.
Passed that, too.
“He just kind of answered every bell and flashed it at every step of the way,” Veach said.
They made him prove it. Wharton wouldn’t have it any other way.
The Division I programs thought of him as too raw as a high school senior. They thought he was undersized for a defensive lineman. His arms weren’t long enough, some said. But when he signed with a Division II program, he told friends he would still one day make the NFL. Didn’t care who believed it.
So when some teammates took spring and summer breaks in the offseason, he hired personal trainers. He wasn’t working simply to better himself against his current competition. He was already preparing for what he might see in the NFL.
“His first semester here, he put on about 25 or 30 pounds, and I’ll tell you what, he wasn’t adding fat,” Missouri S&T head coach Todd Drury said. “He just blossomed in the weight room.
“He understand that it’s such a small percentage of players who make it to that next level, so it takes more than just ability. We had those conversations really early because that was already on his mind.”
Wharton is quiet but determined, his former coaches say. A gentle giant, Allen describes him. He never needed to be pushed.
In fact, in high school, Allen relished the chance to give a fiery pregame speech for the purpose of “looking into my players eyes and seeing who was ready to play.” Wharton didn’t react much. On the field, though, “his motor was non-stop,” Allen said.
When Drury first dug into his film as he recruited him, that was the first thing he noticed.
“Tremendous effort,” Drury said. “He was really just running to the football play after play after play.
“That’s something that’s never changed.”
More effective as he’s aged, though. He had 35 1/2 sacks in college. He impressed enough that after his sophomore year, Division I programs finally called.
Too late, he told him.
“You’re always a little nervous when you bring your best player in your office and you ask him about transferring,” Drury said. “But Tershawn is one of the most loyal people you’ll ever meet.”
Wharton’s phone rang multiple times after the draft. Teams were interested. At some point that evening, he FaceTimed with Drury.
“I’m going to the Chiefs!” he said.
Drury didn’t need to ask the reason. He already knew.
The Chiefs had been on him early.
‘I already made this team’
The Chiefs coaching staff met nightly during training camp, grading every player and every play as they compiled cases for their 53-man roster. The hardest decisions, Veach would later say, came along the defensive line. The front office had viewed it as their deepest position group. Good players would be cut.
And yet, long before, an undrafted rookie from a Division II program was telling those close to him he had already made the team.
“Yeah, I mean, early on in training camp, I asked him how cuts were going to work with the COVID situation, and he said, ‘I already made this team. I’m not thinking about that,’” Drury said. “He was locked in. He wanted to show who he was and not worry about getting cut. That’s who he is.”
It’s who he’s had to be. His mind is trained that way now, a history of prove-it-or-lose-it circumstances molding his approach.
After a few days of training camp, Chiefs defensive line coach Brendan Daly moved Wharton up to practice against the offensive starters. He often matched up with guard Kelechi Osemele, a former All-Pro. He won a few reps.
“When you get picked up, you feel like you belong automatically,” Wharton said. “You’re playing with champions. Competing every day, the more and more I made a few plays in training camp, I realized, ‘Oh, I can do this.’”
Steadily, the playing time keeps advancing. Wharton has played at least half the defensive snaps in three consecutive games, leaving an imprint on each. He forced a fumble in Denver, a play that, unsurprisingly, derived mostly from effort. He recorded his first career sack a week later against the Jets, using a stunt that he often ran in college.
“His work ethic and the way he handles the day-to-day operation, you would not know this guy is a rookie,” Daly said. “You would not know that this guy came from a small school, to be quite honest with you. He has a professional demeanor and work ethic — a maturity about him that’s beyond his years.”
Wharton is the third-highest rated defensive rookie in the NFL, according to Pro Football Focus, which grades him at 71.3. That trails only Washington defensive end Chase Young (73.4), the second overall pick, and Colts safety Julian Blackmon (72.2), a third-round pick. There were 122 other defensive players drafted, Wharton not among them.
It’s getting harder and harder to believe that at every stage of his football life, he’s somehow hovered beneath the radar.
Not with the Chiefs. Their scouts marveled at his audition in the East-West Shrine Game against some of the top college draft prospects in the country. He dominated one-on-one pass rush drills. A physical presence in the run drills, too.
The proverbial measurables didn’t favor him. The low bar for arm length for a defensive lineman, for example, is considered about 32 inches, and even that would be a red flag. At his Pro Day, Wharton measured 31 1/4 inches.
But when Daly saw him play, at the urging of the scouting department, he kept coming back to one thing.
The effort.
“It’s not the way (most) go,” Wharton said. “But it was always the plan. It was always the childhood dream. Just being (at a Division II school), I knew I would have to work harder.”
This story was originally published November 22, 2020 at 5:00 AM.