From ‘Plan B’ to the NFL: Cooper City’s Rashad Weaver heads to Titans in 2021 NFL Draft
Rashad Weaver never stopped believing in his NFL dreams — not when he was transitioning from quarterback to defensive end throughout high, not when he decided he wasn’t going to be the Michigan Wolverines’ “plan B,” not when he tore cruciate ligament in his right knee in 2019 after a breakout season for the Pittsburgh Panthers and not when it seemed like everyone forgot about him going into his redshirt senior season last year.
He made it known when he was tweeting about “first round” of the 2021 NFL Draft from his hospital room in 2019 and writing “1st round” on the tape wrapped around his left wrist all throughout the 2020 college football season. While his first-round dreams didn’t quite come to fruition, Weaver is headed to the NFL anyway on the third day of the Draft.
The Tennessee Titans selected Weaver with the 30th pick in the fourth round of the NFL Draft — No. 135 overall — on Saturday, making him only the second player ever drafted out of Cooper City. Once he suits up for a real game, Weaver will join former kicker Olindo Mare as the only NFL players ever from the Broward County high school.
In a Draft filled with players from South Florida, Weaver’s path is one of the most unlikely.
He moved to Florida from Indiana after his freshman year and began transforming into one of the better ends in the Miami metropolitan area. He was a quarterback in Indiana, but the Cowboys had visions of him playing defensive line and tight end, so he went to work learning his new position.
In 2015, he caught Michigan coach John Harbaugh’s eye at a camp in Davie and Wolverines extended him his first scholarship offer. He orally committed a week later and stuck by his pledge for more than six months before decommitting just days before National Signing Day in 2016. He was open about what happened: He was “receiving little to no contact from the staff” and Harbaugh told him there was only a 50-50 chance Michigan would have room to take him as part of its Class of 2016.
“I was basically a Plan B,” he wrote on Twitter when he decommitted, “and I know within myself I’m not a Plan B player.”
Less than two weeks later, he signed with Pittsburgh. He wasn’t even one of the top 1,500 players in the country, according to the 247Sports.com composite rankings.
After redshirting in 2016, he logged three sacks as a redshirt freshman in 2017, then 6 1/2 in 2018. In his mind, he was headed to the Draft after his redshirt junior season, until he tore his ACL during training camp. Plans changed, but his expectations didn’t. From his hospital room, he tweeted out a video of himself, with “2021 first round draft” as an accompanying message.
Once he was back on the field, he played his way into the first-round conversation. In only nine games, Weaver piled up 14 1/2 tackles for loss, 7 1/2 sacks and three forced fumbles, and led the nation in pressures in the regular season, according to Pro Football Focus. He played every game with medical tape on his write wrist and the words “1st round” displayed as prominently as he could make them. He wanted to make sure everyone knew about his aspirations.
He was right to be confident, after all.
This story was originally published May 1, 2021 at 1:34 PM.
