When the Green Bay Packers cut quarterback Danny Etling, head coach Matt LaFleur ensured he walked out of the facility doors with his head held high. He didn’t want Etling to get discouraged.
LaFleur knew Etling was talented. He just needed to get back into the swing of things.
Etling went from being the full-time starter at LSU for two years before only receiving practice and preseason reps during his half-decade-long NFL tenure. He’d been inside six different NFL buildings but had yet to debut in a regular season game. That’s just the nature of the NFL: it’s a business.
Etling was at a crossroads: either coach or stay in playing shape, hoping to hear his phone ring with another NFL offer. LaFleur had other ideas.
“I think you’d be an excellent fit,” LaFleur told Etling. “I think you should go to Michigan.”
It’s the conversation that kept Etling playing football.
A year and a half later, the former Tiger is playing his second season of football with the Michigan Panthers of the United Football League, owned by FOX Sports, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Dany Garcia.
The UFL is a developmental spring league where overlooked players fight to get on the NFL’s radar. The athletes are all competing for recognition and a chance to revive their careers before it’s too late.
Players with stories like Etling’s are why the UFL exists. Before Johnson was a famous wrestler and actor, he was cut by his pro football team, the CFL’s Calgary Stampeders, in 1995. He considers himself “player 54,” someone who fell just short of making an NFL roster, which is capped at 53.
Johnson and Garcia relaunched the XFL in 2023 and merged it with the competing USFL to create the UFL, a league of “player 54s” looking for a chance to achieve their football aspirations.
According to FOX Sports, more than 250 of last season’s 400 UFL players (60%) heard their name called for NFL workouts, with 78 individuals signing contracts across 30 NFL training camps.
Every game is broadcast across one of FOX or ESPN’s national networks, making the league easily accessible at a time when the sports calendar tends to stagnate.
“We got everybody watching, all eyes on us,” said Memphis Showboats wide receiver Dee Anderson, who played at LSU from 2016 to 2019. “That’s the best part.”
Etling and Anderson aren’t the only previous LSU players looking to make a splash in the UFL. The league will feature 13 former Tigers across its eight teams.
“It’s always going to be a great thing whenever you add a Tiger to your team because it’s just something about us,” San Antonio Brahmas wide receiver Jontre Kirklin said.
Kirklin had always been the most athletic person in the room all of his life. He played baseball, basketball and even bowling at Lutcher High in Louisiana, in addition to playing quarterback.
He wanted nothing more than to play at LSU.
“I prayed for that offer,” Kirklin said. “I was just like, ‘Man, if I get this offer, I promise I won’t mess it up.'”
After spending his first two seasons as a cornerback for LSU, the Tigers coaching staff moved Kirklin to wide receiver in 2019. That year, he shared the practice field with Justin Jefferson and Ja’Marr Chase, two world-class NFL receivers, en route to LSU’s first national championship in 12 years. Kirklin was no longer the clear-cut athletic freak that he was at Lutcher. He was surrounded by others just like him.
Kirklin says his time as a Tiger taught him patience and how to adjust on the fly. Combined with his natural athleticism, Kirklin is an instinctual playmaker.
A week before his final game at LSU, Kirklin was informed that he would start at quarterback in the Texas Bowl against Kansas State, as LSU had only 45 scholarship players available. He threw three touchdown passes in the game, including an 81-yarder as time expired.
Kirklin has thrown two touchdown passes since then, one with the XFL’s Houston Roughnecks in 2023 and the other with the Brahmas last season. He won’t promise another one, but Kirklin won’t rule it out either.
“Keep your popcorn and stay tuned in,” Kirklin said.
Like Kirklin, Houston defensive tackle Glen Logan was also a part of that legendary 2019 Tigers team. He went undrafted in 2022 before signing with the Cleveland Browns. Cleveland let Logan go when it needed to clear space on its roster for an incoming wide receiver.
“It was just a numbers thing,” Logan said. “I totally understand it. That’s just part of our game.”
This league isn’t only another chance for its players; it’s spring football’s last gasp to succeed as a business model. There’s a graveyard’s worth of alternative spring football leagues going back four decades. The UFL can’t afford to fail.
If it does, it won’t be the fault of the league’s players or coaches, who are motivated by a genuine love for football. It’s why these players are willing to go out and play during the hottest months of the year, risking injury with NFL training camps coming less than a month after the UFL championship game on June 14.
It’s a quick turnaround, but these former Tigers learned the importance of pouncing on an opportunity when it presents itself while they were at LSU.
“This league is a league of opportunity,” Kirklin said. “So I’ll be able to go out and showcase my talent and pray that I stay healthy throughout this whole season to be able to get a call and get a shot to go out and get back into the NFL.”
Others are content to ride their football journeys out on happy trails, content with wherever it takes them.
“I think you only get so long to play this game,” Etling said.
The mindset among UFL players is cohesion: team victories will result in individual success. If their team hoists the trophy at the end of 12 weeks, they know their chances of getting even one NFL call will increase.
“Man, we want to win that thing,” San Antonio punter Brad Wing said.
The crusade for the 2025 UFL crown begins at TDECU Stadium in Houston, where the Roughnecks will host the St. Louis Battlehawks in the league’s second-annual season opener on Friday night.
Roughnecks cornerback Colby Richardson will need no extra motivation to step onto the football field and chase his childhood dreams on opening night. He’s opportunistic, just like an LSU Tiger should be.
“Why not always give it a shot?” Richardson said. “Why not shoot for the stars?”
