Tyren Montgomery built a draft case that does not look like anyone else’s. The John Carroll receiver, a Division III All-American, was the only Division III player invited to the American Bowl and then the only Division III player invited to the Senior Bowl, a rare run of exposure for a prospect who once had to remake his football life almost from scratch.
That path has been a long one. Montgomery initially walked on to play basketball for LSU in 2019, did not appear in a game there, and later returned home because of academic issues and because his mother fell ill. After that, he played backyard football with his brother, tried flag football for a Miami-based team and then attempted to walk on for football at Houston during the COVID-19 pandemic. Nicholls State gave him a chance after most schools passed because he had never played tackle football.
At John Carroll in University Heights, Ohio, Montgomery finally found the production that matched the promise. In 2024, he led the team with 1,071 receiving yards and 17 touchdowns and earned first-team All-Ohio Athletic Conference honors. He followed that with a 2025 season that put him on NFL radars: 1,528 yards, 15 touchdowns and 119 receptions in 14 games, while helping John Carroll reach the Division III semifinals.
The numbers have been strong enough to make the leap feel real, not theoretical. He is listed at 5 feet 11 inches and 204 pounds, with 32.38-inch arms and 8.88-inch hands. His testing included a 4.59-second 40-yard dash, a 35.5-inch vertical jump, a 10-foot-8 broad jump and a 6.84 RAS, and one profile projected him as a seventh-round pick with Detroit, New England, Minnesota, New York and Cleveland among the best fits.
John Carroll’s playoff run offered a final set of proof points. The team beat Mount Union, and Montgomery had 90 receiving yards in an overtime game against the rival in the 2025 playoffs. He added nine catches for 126 yards in the quarterfinals and finished with 136 yards and a touchdown in the semifinals loss. He had also faced Mount Union in 2024, when he caught three passes for 45 yards and a touchdown, and he posted a career-high 176 yards and three touchdowns against Ohio Northern that season.
The tension in Montgomery’s profile is obvious: the NFL is now evaluating a player whose route to the sport ran through basketball, flag football and a pair of colleges far outside the usual spotlight. His background is unusual, but the production is not a fluke. For a 2026 NFL Draft prospect who did not begin with tackle football, the question now is less about whether he can get noticed than how far that production can carry him once evaluators put the whole path side by side with the numbers.
