He wasn’t quite Mr. Irrelevant, but he wasn’t too far off.
Just don’t expect anyone who knows Jalen Brooks to agree with that.
The South Carolina wide receiver was the 244th overall pick (out of 259) in this weekend draft, the final selection made by the Cowboys in this year’s draft class.
But the truth is, it’s amazing he got the call at all.
“It’s bright now,” the 22-year-old said of his future in an introductory conference call with Cowboys media after being drafted. “But it definitely had a lot of dark days.”
Brooks started his college career at Wingate University in North Carolina, a tiny private school with just 2,600 students. Over 12 game appearances as a freshman, he caught just 17 balls, but averaged a promising 17.5 yards per reception.
His sophomore year, he earned All-South Atlantic Conference honors in a 10-2 season. This time, he averaged 21.5 yards per catch. But in the team’s RPO offense, the Bulldogs receivers were rarely more than decoys, and he realized his volume simply wouldn’t be increasing anytime soon.
“I knew in order to get to that next level, I needed the ball more,” he said of the experience.
Brooks transferred to Tarleton State in Texas… but then COVID-19 happened. He says he spent an “extremely hard” summer commuting back and forth from Stephensville, Texas to his home in Charlotte- a 14- to 16-hour drive- as he waited for the world to return to normal.
It was during that summer of displacement that he started working out with QB Country, a position-specific training and development company whose clients include Mac Jones, Gardner Minshew, Sam Howell, Cowboys backup Cooper Rush, and others.
QBC’s Anthony Boone, a former Duke quarterback, had based himself in Charlotte specifically to work with Giants passer and fellow Blue Devils alum Daniel Jones. With North Carolina stay-at-home orders limiting groups to under 10 people, Brooks became one of the receivers who would join Jones and Boone at local parks around the area for socially-distanced throwing sessions.
Brooks says things then started to click for him in a different way.
“He pretty much introduced me to a pro-style offense,” Brooks said of Jones. “I was just out there, just me and a whole bunch of NFL veterans as well that were out there. We just all connected and were just grinding through that whole process.”
When schools returned to face-to-face, Brooks says Jones lobbied for him to transfer to Duke, but South Carolina had already made him an offer with new coach Shane Beamer at the helm.
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Some transfer-related red tape regarding his eligibility held Brooks out of all but the Gamecocks’ final six games of the 2020 season. He started the first six games of his senior season in 2021, but then, citing “personal reasons,” Brooks left the team and missed the final seven contests.
He returned as a super senior- and a changed man- in 2022.
“Things come up that are more important than football,” Brooks told The State about his absence. “You’ve always got to handle your business. Adversity came my way, but I didn’t stop grinding. I kept on working. I came back stronger and faster. I missed for personal reasons and I’m going to continue to keep it that way, [but] it was also a blessing in disguise. I got to create a new identity outside of football. I came back and graduated. I started my master’s. I’m very excited.”
That excitement came through on the field, as the rejuvenated Brooks started all 12 games and ranked second on the team in both receptions and receiving yards. He was recognized with the Overcoming Adversity Award at the team’s senior banquet and began preparing for a possible next step to the pro level.
“Brooks is a physical route runner who uses his strength and body position to gain late separation,” wrote ESPN. “He has long arms, high-points the ball, and excels at winning contested balls. Brooks is a strong runner after the catch and will break some tackles.”
Things were looking up, enough for Brooks to even earn an invite to the NFL scouting combine.
It went poorly.
Although he hit the 91st percentile in the broad jump, Brooks turned in the slowest 40 time of any receiver and failed to impress in any other test or stand out in any physical category apart from arm length.
Still, there was something about him. And a Cowboys scout had noticed.
“The scout that goes in the area,” Cowboys vice president of player personnel Will McClay explained in the team’s Day 3 press conference. “When we have these meetings, they go through and they have a feeling about the player: you talk about him in the room, you talk about the traits they have and how they fit.”
But Brooks had no idea the Cowboys had ever seen him outside of one brief conversation at the College Gridiron Showcase, an all-star game in Fort Worth.
So when he got the call from Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer, Brooks described it as “a super surreal moment.” Now he’ll be in the room with CeeDee Lamb, Michael Gallup, and Brandin Cooks as he looks to overcome the odds once again.
Brooks is admittedly a largely unknown commodity. That can be said of any seventh-round draft pick. But the Cowboys have seen enough to warrant a closer look. And his former coaches at South Carolina are excited for the Dallas staff to discover what they’ve already known, as evidenced by the congratulatory video the program put out on social media, one in which Gamecocks wide receivers coach Justin Stepp is overcome with emotion.
“Incredible journey to get to where he is,” McClay told media members Saturday after Brooks’s selection had been made official. “And to get here, you know that achieving part is in him and you know there’s more upside to him.”
Brooks couldn’t agree more.
“I’m blessed to be in this position right now,” he says. “But the job is just now getting started. It’s nowhere close to being finished.”
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