Patrick Willis has a new career after walking away from NFL
Patrick Willis is living the good life in his retirement from the NFL, but he’s not sitting on a beach. He’s working a Monday-Friday schedule now, embarking on his second career with a Silicon Valley tech startup company.
How about that? Work ethic never has been a problem for Willis, who picked cotton growing up in Tennessee to help support his family and later had to escape with his siblings from an abusive, alcoholic father. He turned himself into a fantastic football player at Ole Miss, was the 11th overall player drafted in 2007 and turned in eight terrific seasons in the NFL before walking away from the game at age 30.
Now a year later, according to Mashable, Willis is just another millenial tech worker trying to find his groove, working at Open Source Storage and making something of himself after football.
“For me, this is an opportunity to be able to tell young kids that you can be more than just a physical specimen to be great,” Willis said. “I’m a person that can’t speak about something until I’ve done it myself.”
A chance meeting with tech entrepreneur Eren Niazi, who launched Open Source Storage in 2001 in his early 20s, happened when he spotted his neighbor, Willis, struggling after recovering from surgery to move some trash bags to his curb.
Niazi and Willis struck up a friendship, and two years later Willis signed on with the company as a board member and with an impressive title — executive vice president for partnerships — but a humility and a work ethic to match.
“A lot of guys come in with a big ego, but Patrick’s not like that,” Niazi said. “He’s just a total pleasure to work with.”
For Willis, he had been thinking about his next move after football for years, so this career change isn’t as wild to him as it was to 49ers fans who were stunned when he walked away from the game he was so good at in March 2015.
“Honestly, I pay attention to guys when they’re finished playing, walking around like they’ve got no hips and they can’t play with their kids. They can barely walk,” Willis said at his farewell press conference. “People see that and they feel sorry, but they don’t realize it’s because he played a few extra years.
“For me, there’s more to my life than football. It has provided an amazing platform for me to build on, but it’s my health first and everything else just kind of makes sense around it.”
The 60-employee (some full time, some contract workers) Open Source Storage provides storage and infrastructure solutions to other companies, according to Mashable. Willis helps interview most of the company’s prospective hires, which leads to some interesting reactions when candidates realize whom they are sitting across the table from.
At least he’s not coming after them like he stalked NFL running backs for years. And Willis’ post-playing career is a great example of a man who has prepared himself extremely well for life after the NFL, and one whom the players’ union should hold up as a model of how players can transition into the next phase of their lives. Willis walked away from the game on his terms, and now he’s attacking his next venture with as much enthusiasm as he has everything else in his life.
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Eric Edholm is a writer for Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @Eric_Edholm
