After bet on himself busts, LB Turner unexpectedly finds what he was looking for with Detroit Lions
Allen Park — Not every bet on yourself ends up a winner. That’s been linebacker Ezekiel Turner’s reality the past several months.
His confidence was rooted in a long history of defying the odds. Underrecruited coming out of Glen Burnie High School, just out of Baltimore, Md., Turner chose to move across the country and play for a JUCO in Los Angeles instead of settling for an offer to play D-II.
“I knew I wanted to play big-time college football,” Turner said. “I knew I could play D-I.”
He was at Los Angeles Pierce College for just six months and played eight games before D-I programs started inquiring about the safety. Because grades were never an issue, he didn’t have to wait to transfer, but the window to make a decision was narrow. He knocked out three visits back-to-back-to-back, checking out three programs that piqued his interest above the others: Illinois, Oklahoma and Washington, in that order.