🥷🏿Big Champ

Taylor Heinicke went undrafted in 2015 out of Old Dominion, despite setting a Division I record for total yards in a game. Over the next five years he bounced through the Vikings, the Patriots practice squad, the Texans, and the Panthers. Cut. Waived. Cut again. He appeared in a total of seven games across three seasons. By the summer of 2020 he was done. He moved in with his sister. He started taking classes to finish the college degree he never completed. He looked into coaching jobs. His agent told him to get the degree first, so he did. He kept training anyway, mostly because his brother-in-law kept pushing him to. Not because he thought a team would call. Just in case. In December 2020, his agent called. Washington needed a body on the practice squad in case COVID wiped out the quarterback room. He was an insurance policy. Nothing more. Weeks later, the starter went down. Heinicke got the ball. He made his first career playoff start against Tom Brady and the defending Super Bowl champion Buccaneers. Washington lost, but Heinicke threw for 306 yards and ran for a touchdown against arguably the greatest quarterback ever to play, and the league noticed. That performance turned into three seasons as Washington's starter, then stops in Atlanta and with the Chargers. He finished his career with 6,663 passing yards and 39 touchdowns across 42 NFL games, all as a player nobody drafted. This past weekend he went back to Old Dominion just to watch a game as an alum. The school surprised him at halftime with the news. On October 15, Old Dominion will retire his number 14, the first jersey retirement in program history. Five years ago he was studying for a degree he thought would replace football. Now the number he wore chasing it is about to hang in the rafters for good.