New Baltimore Ravens offensive tackle Carson Vinson is a rarity among NFL Draft picks these days. The former Alabama A&M lineman was the lone player selected who spent his entire career at an HBCU over the course of the three day NFL Draft when he was selected in the fifth round.
The North Carolina native was at home in Cary with his father, Richard, when he got the call from the Baltimore Ravens on Saturday afternoon.
“It’s surreal,” Vinson told HBCU Gameday in an exclusive interview. “I seen the number pop up and I saw the area code. It’s a surreal feeling.”
Vinson started his career as a two-star prospect out of Panther Creek High school, but ended up on a SWAC staff with several coaches with a recruiting pipeline in North Carolina.
“A&M has really been a home for me. They were the ones who took a chance on me, especially being from Cary, NC. None of the big teams here took a chance on me,” Vinson recalled. So coach (Duane) Taylor and coach (Connell)Maynor, they took a chance on me and I really just felt like I owed it to them to stay there those four years. Because that’s who really believed in me first.”
At 6’7, 314 pounds with quick feet, Vinson had the chance to hit the portal and play at a bigger school — and definitely one with a bigger bank account. But Vinson exemplified a characteristic that isn’t always associated with star college athletes these days: loyalty.
“That’s the biggest thing that I wanted to show everybody is that you don’t have to go transfer up to schools,” Vinson said of his decision to stay in Huntsville, AL. “You can do it from your HBCU. That’s really what I wanted to show the most about staying from A&M and doing it from A&M is that you don’t have to go chase the money or chase anything else — you can do do it right from your institution.”
He did it all under the watchful eye of his father. Richard Vinson played ball for Jim Tressell at Youngstown State in the late 1980s before transferring to Winston-Salem State University. The younger Vinson credits his father and the rest of his support with giving him the support and perspective that eventually landed him in a Baltimore Ravens jersey.
“I always get good advice from them because they’re going to shoot it to me straight. It’s important to have people that’s going to tell you what’s right and wrong and what’s good and what’s bad for you,” Carson Vinson said. “My dad has been there for me every part of the way.”
Now he will be heading to Baltimore to work towards protecting Lamar Jackson.