Want to play professional football? Here's a tip: Put aside football for college lacrosse.
Tom Kennedy went basically three years without playing football at Bryant University in Rhode Island while tearing up the lacrosse field, returned to the gridiron as a senior and led the team in receiving, dabbled in professional lacrosse for a summer, went back to school for his MBA and a final season of football, latched on a year later with the Lions and last Thursday night, on national television against the Dallas Cowboys, in the brightest moment of a seven-year career in the shadows, helped spark the Lions to their biggest win of the season.
That's the abridged version of Kennedy's story, the lax to his lacrosse. The longer one is a portrait of perseverance. Lions special teams coach Dave Fipp, who's watched Kennedy grind one season after another on Detroit's practice squad without griping one damn time about his role, harkens back to a lesson he learned growing up from his dad, a military pilot in the Vietnam era who probably would have seen eye to eye with Kennedy's dad, a retired NYPD officer.
Fipp's dad would tell him that for all the money the military spent testing and training pilots to identify those it could count on, "The one thing they have not figured out how to measure is what’s in your heart and what’s in your mind."
"And that’s the greatest thing about this game, too. You just can’t measure that stuff," Fipp said Thursday a week after Kennedy ripped off 141 return yards in the Lions' 44-30 win to lay claim to the starting job as kick returner. "And when it comes out like it did for him in that game, it’s just incredible to watch. The power of the human spirit, a guy who wants to go make a play and just decides he’s not going to let this opportunity pass him by, you just can’t measure it. And sometimes a man is probably sitting there ... watching other people get turns and that just builds inside of him, and he gets the chance and he just lets it rip. It was awesome."
Playing for the second week in a row for the injured Kalif Raymond, Kennedy took his first kick return 40 yards. Then he peeled off a 21-yard punt return for the second straight game, setting up the Lions' first touchdown drive. After Dallas cut the deficit to three in the fourth quarter, Kennedy took his second kick return 38 yards to set up another touchdown drive. And he took his third, after the Cowboys had pulled back within one score, 42 yards to set the stage for Detroit's fifth and final touchdown that would seal the game.
The Lions entered the game, their playoff hopes on the line, averaging 25.9 yards on kick returns this season, which ranked toward the bottom of the league. Kennedy bobbed and weaved his way to an average of 40, shooting gaps and bouncing off tackles. He's averaged 33.5 yards on six kick returns in the last two games, second best in the NFL for any player with more than one return this season.
Running back Jacob Saylors has been the Lions' primary kick returner this year. Raymond, set to return as soon as Sunday against the Rams, will take over punt return duties whenever he's ready, a two-time All-Pro at that position. But make no mistake, Kennedy will "be back there on kickoff return," said Fipp. Fipp even teased the idea of putting Raymond and Kennedy on punt return together, in a pick-your-poison sort of ploy.
There's a lot that goes into returning kicks, more than meets the eye. While the blocking is obviously crucial, Fipp will tell you that "great returners make great blockers. And the better that guy does with the ball in his hands, the better those blockers end up doing." Lions wide receivers coach Scottie Montgomery, once a kick returner for the Broncos, commends Kennedy's balance in tight spaces, his vision through small windows, but one trait above the rest: "Zero. Fear."
"You're a returner, you can just imagine, you got 10 guys that are running directly at you, full speed, most on the same level ... And he's just fearless. I mean, he's just flying through there," said Montgomery. "And that is what it takes to be a returner."
Kennedy, listed at 5'10, is quick more than fast, built for scurrying more than scorching. He feels especially suited to the NFL's new Dynamic Kickoff, which tightens the field and places a premium on shiftiness. It's here that Kennedy's lax background, in all seriousness, serves him well. The "short-area quickness stuff," he said, translates from that field to this one.
"Lacrosse is like basketball where you’ll be in a set or a certain position but you don’t have a specific route, and the return plays are kind of like that," he said. "There’s an area you want to get to, but you’re also just kind of trusting what you’re seeing and trying to find open space. I try not to do too much, and don't make it more than what it is. If you see an opening, hit it, and don’t overcomplicate things."
In his hometown of Farmingdale, NY, in the middle of Long Island, they say Kennedy was the best at every sport he played. His favorite sport was football, but they say he was unstoppable in lacrosse. He's had the same best friends since he was six or seven years old, teammates at every level through high school. One of them is the son of a sports handicapper who rose to fame in the 1980's and 90's and inspired Al Pacino's character in the film Two For the Money. Known across the internet for his brash, boisterous videos in which he offers betting advice. Stu Feiner, aka 'The Source,' is Tom Kennedy's biggest hype man.
"He's nuts," Kennedy said with a smile.
Kennedy, meanwhile, is so understated that while he appreciates the acclaim for his performance against the Cowboys -- including a game ball from Dan Campbell -- "honestly, having the long weekend (after the game) has kinda been sh**ty, everybody’s been hyping it up for longer than normal," he said. "So it’s been nice to just get back to work. Whenever I’m retired I’ll be able to look back at all this stuff and be happy about it. Just focused on the Rams right now." Because Kennedy lets his play do the talking, Feiner can't help but do some talking for him.
"He would race you to open the door first. He just won at everything he did, every sport he played, forever," Feiner said. "They played tackle football in the snow in my backyard, hundreds of times, and not only did he not get tackled, he didn’t get touched. He was just born with this grace. He would be the first pick in every sport, no matter what, under any circumstances. Everybody always wanted to be on Tom Kennedy’s team. Because it was a foregone conclusion: if you’re on Kennedy’s team, you’re winning. People fought to be on his team."
Recruited as a two-sport athlete to Bryant, Kennedy didn't catch on right away in football. The only action he saw as a freshman came in "JV games on Sunday mornings," when the backups would play local prep schools with post-graduate players. He remembers Navy Prep "killed us running the triple option." Kennedy gave up football the next two years to focus strictly on lacrosse, where he was an instant star for the Bulldogs, before being lured back to the gridiron as a senior by a new head coach, his old teammates and the chance to give his first love one last go.
Despite a little rust, "I think I was able to pick it back up fairly quickly," said Kennedy. That's modest. The new coach called him "my best player." Kennedy was first-team All-NEC, which operates at the FCS level of Division I, while leading the conference in receiving touchdowns -- the kind of performance that hinted at an NFL future. The next summer, Kennedy went pro in Major League Lacrosse with the Boston Cannons, but had a year of NCAA eligibility remaining in football because of his hiatus from the team. He left the Cannons early to return to Bryant for fall camp.
"I don’t know if I’ll ever have the opportunity to play football again, so this was kind of a no-brainer for me," Kennedy said at the time. "I knew I was coming back once the coaches told me I had another year.”
At the same time that Kennedy was getting back into football, Chris Hogan, a one-time college lacrosse star who would eventually play for the Cannons himself, was lighting it up as a receiver for the Patriots after going undrafted out of an FCS school. It was an especially big story at Bryant, nestled in New England. Kennedy didn't know if he had a shot at a similar future, but he had to find out.
His last season at Bryant was cut short by an injury and didn't go as well as the season prior. The Patriots were the only team to attend Kennedy's pro day. The Lions, led at the time by Bill Belichick disciples Bob Quinn and Matt Patricia, were the only team to offer Kennedy a rookie minicamp tryout -- and "luckily I did enough to get signed," he said. Then he did enough in training camp to earn a spot on the practice squad. He appeared in one game the next two seasons, a loss to the Chiefs in 2019.
When Brad Holmes and Dan Campbell took over in 2021 and tore the roster down to the studs, they had a dire need for receivers -- and for the sort of players who wouldn't back down from the road ahead. Already, they were searching for grit. Early in camp that year, "I think you just knew," Campbell said this week, "the kid's a football player. He's not a kid; he's a man. He’s instinctive, he can play all the positions. Every time he had a chance to make a play or get in position to make a play, he made a play."
Kennedy made Detroit's final roster that fall for the first time in his career and wound up appearing in 12 games, capping things off by throwing a 75-yard touchdown on a trick play in a win over the Packers in the season finale. It was one of the first examples of Campbell staging a moment to reward a deserving player, a habit that's come to define his tenure in Detroit. It pained Campbell to have to cut Kennedy entering the next season when the Lions had a little more depth at receiver and returner.
In an emotional moment captured on HBO's 'Hard Knocks,' Campbell looked Kennedy square in the eye and said, "There ain't nothing else you could do. You did everything you could possibly f**king do. You put it on tape and it's all out there. And we've gotta go another way. I hate it because you earned it. You f**king earned it and it falls into, well, what about body type? What about a true outside receiver? What about special teams? It's a move we felt like we had to make, man."
That's how it's gone for Kennedy each year since: sent to the practice squad at the end of camp, called up here and there in a pinch, sent back down. He's been waived or released 13 times from the active roster in his tenure with the Lions, the same number of games in which he's played over the last four seasons. "And to his credit," said Campbell, "he just continues to go back to work. He gets on the vet squad, he kicks ass in practice, gives a great look."
Something has to motivate Kennedy here, something other than just loving the game. Something has to fuel him beyond cashing an NFL check. There's glamour in the game, but very little in Kennedy's grind. In a word, Kennedy is conscientious. Asked this week what keeps him going, he said dutifully, "Just gotta be ready."
"You never really know when the opportunity's coming, you don’t know if it’s going to come at all," he said. "I just think you owe it to yourself and obviously to your team to be ready if the opportunity does come, to be able to step up and make plays when they come to you."
"And he’s always done that," said Campbell.
Always, said Feiner: "If you watch the way he plays, he does not hesitate for one one-millionth of a second. He’s so definitive. Like, the second he runs that kickoff back, the second he gets the ball, he just goes. It's like he’s shot out of a f**king cannon, and he is cold as ice. There is no emotion. It’s professionalism, gotta do what you gotta do, your body’s on the line. He knows what the situation needs, and he executes."
The Lions are so comfortable with Kennedy that they'll play him at any receiver spot, as they did when they lost Amon-Ra St. Brown early in their Thanksgiving loss to the Packers. Kennedy was already active to replace Raymond, so "we just put TK right there and he becomes Saint," said Campbell. Kennedy caught a career-high four passes, including a 23-yarder down the seam that set up the Lions' first touchdown. His play strength is as impressive as anyone's on the team.
As his coach at Bryant once said, "when there’s a collision, he’ll literally hang on to the football. When you see him, he’s not that tall, but he gets into traffic and is so strong and brings down the ball." It's one of the many reasons that Campbell says now, "there’s a tremendous amount of trust that he’s got with myself, the coaches and with (Jared) Goff, which is significant."
Most of all, from his teammates and coaches alike, there's a tremendous amount of respect.
"I can’t tell you how ecstatic I am for Tom Kennedy," said Fipp, the special teams coach. "There’s nobody in this building who deserves the attention and the recognition more than him."