He worked in medical sales a few months ago. Now he’s trying to make the Chiefs’ roster
The introductory paragraph of a LinkedIn profile appropriately reads like a sales pitch, a 20-something-year-old trying to embark on a new career.
Six months ago, Wyatt Hubert updated this profile, complete with his bachelor’s degree from Kansas State, his most recent job and the skills he thought he developed along the way: team building, results, goal setting and competitive intelligence.
It all reads like a typical account. With a couple of exceptions.
Job title: Professional athlete.
Company: Cincinnati Bengals.
Full-time position, by the way.
That’s the gig Hubert quit last August, at just 24 years old, and then successfully leveraged into a new career — medical sales.
But now he wants back in, and this time with his hometown team.
Hubert, who retired from football just eight months ago due to nagging injuries, took part in a tryout with the Chiefs over the weekend. He has a couple of more NFL tryouts lined up over the ensuing weeks, though he’d prefer to stay mum on which teams.
“I definitely thought about my decision — I definitely went back and forth with it a lot,” Hubert said. “It was a tough decision, but I decided (that) this is such a short window in my life.
“Why not take advantage of the opportunity and just give it my all?”
So, to get it straight: Hubert has put a budding career in medical sales on hold to give the NFL one more try. His boss is cool with it, in case you are wondering.
He took part in the Chiefs’ minicamp over the weekend where, for 72 hours, he put on the white practice jersey of the team he grew up rooting for. Hubert went to Chiefs games as a kid. Sundays were church first, followed by Chiefs football, he recalled.
He is among dozens of players who attempted to use a handful of practices to stand out from the crowd. Most of them don’t make it, if we’re being honest. Hubert too is a longshot, more so by the day, even with the advantage of NFL experience that most others on the field did not have.
But he’s a reminder, one example among many at the Chiefs facility last weekend and others across the country, of how close most of these guys are to needing a Plan B. Of the need for a fallback option. Of how quickly it all can end, long before you’re ready.
And, he hopes, he’s an example that it’s never to late to grab it back. We’ll see on that. Would be a fun story, though, wouldn’t it?
The Bengals plucked Hubert in the seventh round of the 2021 draft out of K-State, after he made the freshman All-America team in his first year, followed by seven sacks his second year and 8 1/2 sacks in a COVID-shortened junior season.
But a couple of months after the NFL Draft, his rookie season was over before it started with a torn pectoral. Other ailments followed, and he called it quits last August.
But during the ensuing season last fall, he found it darn near impossible to watch football. Well, to watch NFL football, anyway. He is careful to say he doesn’t want to offend anyone, but the truth is when he’d flip on the TV and see guys playing in a game that he felt he had surpassed in college at Kansas State, that’s when he knew.
One more try.
He’d regret it otherwise.
“That ate me alive — seeing guys on teams or on rosters that I know I performed better than in college,” Hubert said. “That was probably the main motivator that drove me to come back.”
Maybe in the back of his mind, he knew. Hubert never stopped working out, even while a medical sales representative. Stuck to a diet, too.
Ready for a call.
Months later, that part remains.
Ready for one more chance.
This story was originally published May 11, 2023 at 6:00 AM.