Parker Hughes knew he’d get the chance to play in the NFL.
So much so that the former MTSU linebacker gathered with a group of nearly 40 people in Bristol, Virginia, for day three of the 2026 NFL Draft.
In a packed Airbnb with family, friends and old high school teammates by his side, he watched the telecast speed through the late rounds of the draft, waiting for the call that would change his life.
Over the previous months, he stayed in contact with several teams, especially the Jacksonville Jaguars. Hughes was sure going into the weekend that he’d earn a shot somewhere, either as a draft pick or an undrafted free agent.
Still, when his phone finally rang, with “POTENTIAL SPAM” on the Caller ID, he felt uncertain.
“I was like, ‘Oh crap, what is this,’” Hughes said.
As the Jaguars selected Hughes with the 240th pick of the draft, he answered the phone and spoke with some combination of general manager James Gladstone, head coach Liam Coen and linebackers coach Tem Lukabu.
Admittedly, Hughes doesn’t recall who spoke first, or even what was said. All he knows is that it sent his “whole world into shock.”
“It was an unbelievable feeling,” Hughes said. “Nothing, nothing I’ve ever felt before in my life. It was everything all in one, all the work I put in from the first time I put the cleats on to now.”
For Hughes, the call served as an affirmation of the time spent working towards his dream, and a reminder of how he obtained it.
“I took the hardest route possible as far as getting to the NFL, as being a walk-on,” Hughes said. “Taking that route definitely wasn’t easy.”
On April 25, Hughes became the 33rd Blue Raider to be drafted to the NFL, the first to hear his name called since 2018 and the only Conference USA player picked in 2026. But his path to the draft began well before his MTSU career.
East Tennessee Built
An Elizabethton, Tennessee native, Hughes lettered in football and basketball at Elizabethton High School. Under head football coach Shawn Witten, the winningest coach in program history and brother to Pro Football Hall of Famer Jason Witten, Hughes guided the Cyclones to back-to-back state championships in 2019 and 2020.
Shawn Witten said what separated Hughes from everyone else was his commitment to football outside of mandatory practices. Whether it was swinging by his house to get keys to the weight room or asking him to come down to the practice field for extra work on weekends, Hughes took the extra steps necessary to reach that “next level” status as a player.
The pair even became workout buddies.
“We would find time on the weekends or early in the morning before school,” Shawn Witten said. “Or he’d find time to get an extra running session in, catch balls … I think that was a difference maker.”
As Hughes persisted through an inconsistent supporting cast in his personal life, Shawn Witten became a resource for him.
“He just kept his head down, kept working,” Shawn Witten said. “Parker had to believe in himself, it took a lot of intrinsic motivation and self-discipline and, he had to do a lot of things on his own.”
On the field, Hughes played the majority of his Cyclones’ career at wide receiver and defensive back but moved to running back in the playoffs his senior year due to team injuries.
In five playoff games at a new position, Hughes surpassed 100 rushing yards each week and led Elizabethton to its second straight state title.
Playing all three sides of the ball, Hughes totaled 62 receptions for 1,326 receiving yards, rushed for 539 yards, scored 28 total touchdowns and hauled in six interceptions during his senior season, earning 4A Tennessee Titans Mr. Football honors along the way.
Middle Tennessee Made
Despite his accolades, Hughes didn’t own a football scholarship out of high school. Instead, he “bet on himself” and attended MTSU as a preferred walk-on for then-head coach Rick Stockstill.
Hughes worked multiple jobs to keep his college career afloat, appearing in just four games for the Blue Raiders during his freshman year in 2021. That offseason, he transferred to Samford University in chase of a scholarship but ultimately returned to Middle Tennessee before fall camp began.
Over the next two seasons, Hughes began to have an impact on the field, making 16 combined starts. He finally earned the scholarship he’d been chasing ahead of the 2023 campaign and finished the year fourth on the team with 53 tackles.
Then, MTSU fired his coach.
Middle Tennessee parted ways with Stockstill after 18 seasons and hired former Vanderbilt University head coach Derek Mason to take his place on Dec. 6, 2023.
Stockstill’s firing unleashed a flurry of transfers. Key youth pieces turned eventual draft picks, such as safety Jakobe Thomas and offensive lineman Keylan Rutledge, moved up to Power Four programs.
Roughly 50 total players departed from MTSU following the coaching change, Hughes evaluated his goals and opted to stick around with Middle Tennessee – a decision he stands by today.
Where others saw Stockstill’s firing as an opportunity to start over somewhere else, Hughes saw an opportunity to step up under a new coaching staff.
“[I thought] it’s time for me to be in that position, take on that leadership and, be the captain and be the guy,” Hughes said of staying at MTSU.
Mason’s hiring brought a wave of changes for Middle Tennessee, most notably a fresh coaching staff and 61 new faces in the Blue Raider locker room.
One staff addition was linebackers coach A.J. Reisig, who rejoined the college ranks after one year with the Houston Roughnecks of the XFL.
Ahead of Mason’s first season, Reisig’s linebacker room proved to be competitive in depth. Between newcomers and Stockstill holdovers like Hughes, MTSU carried roughly 20 linebackers on its spring roster, Reisig said.
The sheer number of bodies made evaluations tough in Reisig’s first spring, but Hughes’ competitive nature and pure love for football made him stand out early.
“You watch just practice film, and practice is like a game to him,” Reisig said. “And I think that’s why he was able to continually get better because of the effort and time he put into practice.”
Before the Blue Raiders could kick off Mason’s first season, Hughes suffered a back injury in the summer, limiting him throughout fall camp and MTSU’s first few games.
After weeks of healing and waiting to be cleared for contact, Hughes made his 2024 season debut in Middle Tennessee’s week five contest against Duke University.
Reisig planned to keep Hughes on a pitch count in his first game back, limiting him to 20 or so snaps for the day, he said. But as the Blue Devils’ lead swelled and the Blue Raiders’ homecoming turned to an onslaught, Reisig kept Hughes in, and Hughes kept responding.
“I played him like 40 to 50 snaps, and he’s like, ‘It’s the best thing you ever did for me because I stopped thinking about my back,’” Reisig said.
Hughes went on to have a solid first season under Mason, starting every game after his return to the lineup and finishing second on the team with 69 tackles.
Though he performed well enough as a redshirt junior to draw financial interest from other teams, Hughes said his back injury caused him to miss certain goals he’d set for himself. Those goals, combined with his strong relationship with Reisig, led him to stay at MTSU in 2025.
In the win column, the Blue Raiders didn’t fare much better in Hughes’ final season – winning just three games for the second year in a row. Despite MTSU’s struggles as a team, the redshirt senior linebacker made good on his goals.
Middle Tennessee voted Hughes as a team captain to begin the year, and he wore the green dot, a sticker indicating which player is allowed to communicate with their coaching staff via radio for all 12 games.
He wrapped up his final season at MTSU with a team-leading and career-best 100 tackles, including three TFLs – the first Blue Raider to reach 100 since 2013. Hughes also played a defensive high of 795 snaps for defensive coordinator Brian Stewart and snagged two interceptions en route to a Second-Team All-CUSA selection.
“God is good, and it worked out for me, obviously getting picked late,” Hughes said. “Yeah, I’m super happy I stayed and got to work with Mason and A.J. and Brian Stewart and all those guys.”
As a team captain, Hughes became known for his competitiveness, consistent effort and physicality on the field, but he’s still a small-town, East Tennessee guy at his core.
Middle Tennessee faced Sam Houston State University in Hughes’ final home game as a Blue Raider. Reisig remembers a pause in the game, between plays, when country artist Darius Rucker’s 2013 cover of “Wagon Wheel” blared over the Floyd Stadium speakers.
As the song winds down, Rucker sings of a trucker headed west from the Cumberland Gap to Johnson City, Tennessee — a mere six miles from Hughes’ hometown of Elizabethton.
At that point in the song, Reisig glared over at his senior linebacker and had never seen the Carter County kid so fired up.
“It just goes to show you how his personality is,” Reisig said. “He’s a guy that loves the country, right? Loves to go fishing, and just some country music, some big trucks and that’s kind of his demeanor that he leads on with.”
Later in the same game, Hughes intercepted a Bearkats’ pass, clinching MTSU’s first home win of the season, and bookending his career as a Blue Raider on senior day.
North Florida Bound
After MTSU’s season concluded on Nov. 29, Hughes used December to rest and get his body right. He began meeting with NFL teams in January at the College Gridiron Showcase, a yearly post-season college all-star event, in Fort Worth, Texas.
Following CGS, Hughes underwent an eight-week training regimen at D1 Training, with nationally recognized strength and conditioning coach Cliff Marshall, and later capped off his training with MTSU strength coach Jamie Blatnick, who “put the cherry on top”, Hughes said.
At his MTSU Pro Day, Hughes posted a 4.40 40-yard dash time and completed 25 bench press reps. Had Hughes been invited, his marks would’ve ranked first and tied for second among linebackers at the 2026 NFL Scouting Combine.
Impressing at his pro day, Hughes’ talks with teams ramped up, but no team stayed as consistent in their pursuit as Jacksonville.
“There were a lot of teams interested in talking ball with me, but the Jags had, I don’t know man, that’s where I wanted to be,” Hughes said. “They were No. 1 on my board, so for them to give me the call and draft me was even more special.”
Following the draft, the Jaguars general manager said there was a “ton” of reasons why the team chose Hughes with their last pick of the draft, including his speed, ball tracking and tackling abilities.
Gladstone credited Jacksonville’s coaching and scouting departments for singling out Hughes and making sure he didn’t become an afterthought in the draft process.
“Over the course of this past month, Liam [Coen], myself and Camp [defensive coordinator Anthony Campanile] were able to really become intimate in understanding what he would offer and be able to towards the end of the draft feel good about submitting his name,” Gladstone said.
Now officially in the league, Hughes’ first day on the job for the Jags is May 8, when the team officially begins rookie minicamp. From an East Tennessee kid to MTSU walk-on to seventh-round draft pick, Hughes has already defied the odds, but knows the work isn’t finished as he aims to make the final 53-man roster come late August.
“Obviously, I have a long way to go,” Hughes said. “This is just the beginning of what I’ve got going on, but it’s super exciting and I’m going to be ready to play.”
Lead photo illustration by Brett Walker.
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