Former New York Jets Star D’Brickashaw Ferguson Has Incredible New Career Path

There was a time, not all that long ago, that the New York Jets were a legitimately good football team.

Led by Rex Ryan, an elite defense, and a punishing ground game, the Jets won 28 games between 2009-2011 and twice reached the AFC Championship Game.

A (literally) large part of that success was stud left tackle D’Brickashaw Ferguson. New York used the fourth overall pick in the 2006 NFL Draft to select the 6-foot-6, 310-pound star out of  Virginia.

Ferguson repaid their faith, starting 160 games over 10 seasons with the Jets and making the Pro Bowl each year from 2009-2011.

He retired in 2015, and is now seeking out a career in a far different field.

Ferguson recently joined Charles Tillman and Roman Harper for an episode of the NFL Players: Second Acts podcast.

It was there that he revealed that he’s opted to attend nursing school.

“I just needed that sense of, ‘I think I can do this,'” Ferguson told the hosts.

Ferguson said he wanted to seek out the challenge of trying something new.

“I hadn’t done science since, I don’t know, high school,” Ferguson said. “So my confidence in that space was like, ‘I don’t know if I can do this.’ UVA was hard for me.”

He took his prerequisite courses at community college and just kept moving forward from there.

“I wanted something that I could offer. Like, yes I play football, but I have this,” Ferguson said. “I’m qualified to do this work and I play football. So if both of them help or encourage one another, great. But even without football I can still do my job with excellence, that’s something we learned as athletes.”

It’s a remarkable story and just goes to show how impressive Ferguson is.

Who knows whether the Jets will be any good in 2023? But at least they’ll have something and someone to cheer for if not.