USF held its football pro day Wednesday, but the odds seem stacked against any Bulls hearing their name called when the NFL draft is held next month.
USF participants included Sean Atkins, Kelley Joiner, Ta'Ron Keith, RJ Perry, Nay'Quan Wright, Jason Vaughn, D.J. Gordon, Michael Brown-Stephens, Gunnar Greenwald, D’Marco Augustin, Jamie Pettway, Decarius Hawthorne, and Andrew Stokes.
Pro Day on deck. 😤#ComeToTheBay | #StayInTheBay pic.twitter.com/OXJB0o1CX9
— USF Football (@USFFootball) March 24, 2025
The Bulls haven’t had a player taken in the draft since 2018, when defensive tackle Deadrin Senat was drafted in the third round and receiver Marquez Valdes-Scantling was picked in the fifth.
Senat played three years for Atlanta and two for Tampa Bay but hasn’t been on a roster since 2023. Valdes-Scantling has bounced around a bit and recently signed a one-year $5.5 million deal with Seattle.
However, the outlook isn’t good for this crop of Bulls. I checked multiple draft prospect sites to see how they felt about USF, and none of them projected any Bull to be taken.
That doesn’t mean the dream is dead. A player could sign as an undrafted free agent. Stokes was a first-team all-conference punter and a semifinalist for the Ray Guy Award. Teams are always looking for those,
Bulls coach Alex Golesh believes Atkins, USF’s record-breaking receiver, could change some minds about his chance to play pro football.
“I think Sean is obviously really close to my heart, just because of the story and what he's done for us for two years. I talk to a lot of coaches, talk to a lot of GMs. You know, the questions are all the same, like, you know, what's the 40 going to be?
“I tell everybody the same thing: turn the film on and look at the production, and look at the production in the big games against the best competition. He’s just a competitor.”
Anyone who watched Atkins go from walk-on to record-setter understands what Golesh means by production. However, at this time of year, teams look for metrics they can measure, and a 5-foot-10 receiver like Atkins is difficult to quantify.
On that point, Golesh is here to help.
“Whether he gets drafted or not, he goes to a camp and he's going to be hard to cut,” he said. “Other things he can do on special teams, catch everything, fearless, you know, third-down value, the ability to get open.”
Undersized receivers can make it in the NFL in the right situation.
For instance, Danny Amendola, at 5-foot-11 and 185 pounds, is roughly the same size as Atkins. He was undrafted but played 13 years in the NFL and appeared in three Super Bowl games.
Julian Edelman was a 5-foot-10 nobody when the Patriots took him in the seventh round of the 2009 draft. He played in 137 games in his career and caught 36 touchdowns.
There are additional examples, but you get the point.
“You'll have knocks. We have size, speed, whatever you want to knock,” Golesh said of Atkins.
“But he found a way to come here (as a walk-on), to his own way, get on the field, and then become irreplaceable. And so I think whoever ends up taking a chance it will be hard to say, we're not going to keep this guy.”