Tez Walker Hopes To Be ‘Deadly’ At WR In NFL With Baltimore Ravens
Tears started to fall for Tez Walker on draft night.
He told his mother and grandmother at the age of four that he wanted to play in the NFL, a mission that never wavered throughout a ranging set of trials in his life of football. Among those tests were a high school injury, a canceled season and early uncertainty in his lone year at North Carolina.
So when Ravens general manager Eric DeCosta told him, “You will be a Baltimore Raven,” all the emotions set in for Walker.
“That’s always been my ‘why,'” Walker said via Zoom on Saturday. “Football has always kept me level-headed. So hearing those words that I’m going to be a part of an NFL roster, that broke me down in tears.”
Walker, listed at 6-foot-1 and 193 pounds, was taken in the fourth round of the NFL Draft on Saturday with the 113th overall pick. He was the third Tar Heel taken off the board, with Drake Maye and Cedric Gray preceding him in the first and fourth rounds, respectively.
A spot in the NFL for Walker certainly didn’t come without some hiccups, though. An ACL injury late in his high school days delayed the start of his college career, and the COVID-19 pandemic prevented him from playing any games at North Carolina Central. He later played two seasons at Kent State before transferring to UNC, but the NCAA deemed him ineligible before the start of the season due to the existing two-time transfer rules.
That battle with the NCAA — which publicly lasted for almost two months — kept Walker out of North Carolina’s first four games, but he did get to play in the last eight games of the regular season. He made the All-ACC Third Team before declaring for the draft. Walker posted 41 catches for 699 yards and seven touchdowns in 2023.
