The United States Football League is the latest league to chase success during the NFL offseason. The USFL will try to entertain football fans and also give players an opportunity to play professionally and make it back to the NFL.
One of the players hoping to take advantage of an opportunity in the USFL is former Maryland cornerback Tino Ellis, a native of Reisterstown, Md. The 6-foot-1, 195-pound cornerback was a consensus four-star recruit out of DeMatha Catholic High School and played four seasons at Maryland. He played in 32 games and tallied 73 total tackles with one interception and one forced fumble from 2016-2019.
Ellis, 24, spent some time with the New Orleans Saints and Miami Dolphins, but he never played in an NFL game. Now, Ellis is hoping the USFL will allow him an opportunity to get back into the NFL.
The USFL draft was held in February. Each round was organized by position. Cornerbacks were selected in the eighth round. Ellis was taken fourth by the Michigan Panthers. The Panthers are coached by Jeff Fisher, who was a head coach in the NFL for 22 seasons and appeared in one Super Bowl.
“I’m very excited,” Ellis said on Glenn Clark Radio Feb. 25. “I can’t wait to work with Coach Fisher and pick his brain about football and just learn from a great head coach.”
The USFL consists of eight teams, and each team is set to play a 10-game regular season beginning in April. While the XFL and the AAF have fallen short in recent years, the USFL is hoping to be different. Since these other leagues haven’t been too successful, Ellis was asked if it was a difficult decision to trust the USFL.
“Yeah, definitely, because you do the research and you look at some of the leagues that happened in the past and they never finished,” Ellis said. “But I just feel like it’s the perfect opportunity. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity and wait for an NFL team or wait to go to the CFL and go up north. So I just felt like this was the perfect opportunity for me to get my film and showcase my skills on a national level.”
Ellis explained that his experiences with the Saints and Dolphins weren’t the best. In 2020, Ellis missed out on a typical preseason with the Saints because of COVID. Then in 2021, the Dolphins moved him to safety during training camp, which was a completely new learning experience for him. But now Ellis will return to cornerback, his natural position, with the Panthers in the USFL and try to make a name for himself.
“I feel like me being drafted as a corner and being a priority to this team, the Michigan Panthers, I feel like it’s the perfect opportunity to get some film as a starter, show what I can do and go from there,” Ellis said.
Training camps for USFL teams will open March 21, and the first game will take place April 16. USFL games will be aired on Fox, Fox Sports 1, NBC, Peacock and USA, so the players will get plenty of exposure for future opportunities.
Ellis and the Panthers will debut on NBC and Peacock against the Houston Gamblers April 17. All of the regular-season games will be played in Birmingham, Ala., and then the playoff games will be played in Canton, Ohio, with the last game being played on July 3.
Until the season starts, Ellis is staying ready as he is hoping to make the most of this opportunity and eventually make it back onto an NFL roster for the following season.
“I’m hungry, I’m just ready for my next opportunity, I want to showcase to the world what I can do at my position,” Ellis said. “… I never doubted this whole process of waiting. Just being ready, I train every day, hope for the best and stay mentally and physically prepared and ready to go.”
For more from Ellis, listen to the full interview here:
Photo Credit: Kenya Allen/PressBox