The Tampa Bay Buccaneers officially announced the addition of 18 undrafted free agents ahead of the beginning of Rookie Mini-Camp on Friday. The team made it a priority to add numbers to the wide receiver room. The Buccaneers selected Trey Palmer out of Nebraska in the sixth round and also agreed to terms with four undrafted wide receivers (Kade Warner, Taye Barber, Rakim Jarrett, Ryan Miller).
That meant it was officially time for former Kansas State wide receiver Kade Warner to realize his dream of making it to the NFL. After not being selected, he'll begin his professional career on a similar path to that of his father, Kurt Warner, A Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback and Super Bowl XXXIV Champion.
The younger Warner understood where he sat on draft boards leading up to the weekend. When the call from the Buccaneers finally came, he was emotional, to say the least.
"It was emotional because I knew who I was, I knew I wasn't a first two days kind of guy. So, that last day every time I left for a phone call whether it was an agent or just one of my buddies calling me, [when] I come back into the room my whole family is holding their breath," Warner said while speaking to the media on Friday. "When that sixth-round kind of hit, seventh-round, then it starts to dwindle down gets close, [and] then post-draft obviously you start getting closer and closer to when I got the call where it was time to be a Buccaneer. I came back and told my family, started crying a little bit but it was emotional. Just a lot of work to get here."
The underdog story for Warner began long before he went undrafted in April. He started his college career at Nebraska, spending four years as a walk-on while not being a significant contributor. Warner ended up transferring to Kansas State and developed into a reliable playmaker over his final two seasons.
It's a dream come true to land with the Buccaneers but now it's time to go back to work.
"The moment is just surreal; I'm so blessed to be here. My cousin teaches elementary school in Arizona, so I went there and kind of told them my story last week and just told them my life journey," Warner said. "How I was a walk-on, no one wanted me, didn't have any offers, went to Nebraska nobody wanted me, went to Kansas State, took a couple years, finally got there, didn't get drafted, so there's been a lot of twists and turns and a lot of adversity. So, to be here, to put on this jersey and to go out there and play football, it's literally a dream come true for me. Right now, it was kind of a dream come true, it still is, but now when you get out there on the field and you've got cleats on, [and] the balls going around it's just football. It's just back to square one."
One reason that Tampa Bay head coach Todd Bowles wanted to give Warner a look is his ability to contribute on special teams. His fundamentals and coachability are a couple of aspects that stood out to Bowles on the first day of mini-camp.
"Coachable, very coachable, [and] fundamentally sound it looked like in individual drills," Bowles said. "One day is hard to get a gauge on it so we'll see how it progresses from there."
"Solid football player," Bowles continued. "He can catch the ball, he can play special teams, he can do a lot of things that we need and we're always looking for special teams players."
Warner caught 60 passes for 622 yards and five touchdowns during 27 appearances in two years at Kansas State. That included a senior season where he recorded a career-high 46 catches for 456 yards and a team-leading five receiving touchdowns.
The type of person to draw motivation from wherever he can, Warner is excited to prove the doubters wrong. He believes that he's the smartest wide receiver in the draft class.
"Competitive. I want to go out there and I want to win. I take everything personally – like I was saying, from that undrafted, that walk-on mentality, every little thing," Warner said. "Like if the coaches pick somebody else before me, I write that down, if somebody gets more reps than me in this walk through, I write that down. It's kind of like that chip on your shoulder, I think just that expression is said a lot so I don't like saying it, but I just take everything personally. So, I'm competitive like that and I'm the smartest receiver in this draft class and I've said it before. They're going to get a good slot receiver out of me and I'm going to know exactly what to do on every play."
The 6-foot-1, 204-pound wide receiver participated at Kansas State's Pro Day leading up to the draft. He recorded a 4.72-second 40-yard dash, 4.23-second shuttle, 9'00" broad jump, 35-inch vertical jump and 13 bench-press reps.
His competitive nature and ability to contribute on special teams are extremely valuable for an undrafted player trying to make a 53-man roster. It can't hurt that he'll be learning from Mike Evans and Chris Godwin too.
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