CHARLOTTE, N.C. — When Will Grier was three years old sitting in his dad’s lap at Bank of America Stadium, he was locked in on the Panthers football game. His dad, Chad Grier, noticed that his oldest son watched with a different intensity than most young kids, but what he didn’t know is that one day, nearly 21 years later, he’d be sitting in that same stadium watching that son play for the Carolina Panthers.
It took longer than the Grier’s expected for them to finally hear Will’s name called in the 2019 NFL Draft, but this family has seen faith and persistence pay off before.
Will transferred from Florida after a suspension in 2015, he sat out a year due to NCAA transfer rules and then became West Virginia’s starting quarterback in 2017.
His two-day NFL draft wait took some time and patience too, but for Will going sooner wasn’t better than what happened later.
The former West Virginia star had to wait until the third round of the draft, at pick 100 to hear his name called, and when a phone number with a seven-zero-four area code popped up on his phone, he knew his journey to find a new home was over- the kid who grew up on Panthers football, got the call from Carolina.
“When you dream about being an NFL player, I don’t know if other kids or anyone else did this but I always kind of tied it with a team, and that was the Panthers. That’s the team I grew up watching. When I dreamed about playing the NFL, it was wearing a Panthers jersey, which is insane. And here we are!” Grier said when he spoke with NBC Charlotte shortly after being drafted.
For Will, it’s a storybook start to the next chapter of his life, with nearly too many picture perfect stories that led to this moment to sum up. Take for instance, that Grier’s watch party, filled with about 50 people and camera crews was just 3.5 miles down the road from Bank of America Stadium at his uncle’s house.
“It’s incredible to have everyone here. Obviously, this is home and it’s still home and we couldn’t be more excited,” Will said.
You can also point to a small observation of his dad wearing a Panthers blue shirt on draft night.
“I think it was my way of hoping. I grabbed a shirt to put on and I said, ‘No. I’m going to wear the Panther color today. Just subliminal. Just in case.’ It really just doesn’t even seem real,” Chad explained.
Couple that with the fact that Chad, a longtime Panthers season ticket holder, just called the Panthers last week to find out when he should expect an email about renewing his tickets.
“We were kind of like, ‘Well, we live in Charleston now, should we get those renewed?’ Yeah! We’ll be doing that now!” Chad joked.
For Will, the journey is not over as he joins Cam Newton, Kyle Allen and Taylor Heinicke in the Panthers quarterback room – an opportunity he’s looking forward to, and he knows that waiting, and working hard pays off.
“We waited for a long time, a lot longer than we thought we were going to end up waiting. But when we got that phone call we all lit up. It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter when I went. What matters is that we were going to an unbelievable organization and an unbelievable opportunity,” Will said.
As he gets ready to once again play football in North Carolina, it’s clear those country roads in West Virginia really did take him home.