As the 2016 NFL draft entered the later rounds and he hadn’t heard his name called yet, Tarow Barney, who graduated from Bainbridge High and played his last two years of college football at Penn State, decided to go fishing.

“The whole process was pretty much nerve wracking,” Barney said. “Just watching the draft on TV and just watching each round seeing how many people at your position got taken before you.”

The draft came to an end as Barney was fishing and his phone had never rung with a team calling to say they were picking him.

In all 253 players were drafted during the 2016 NFL draft, but the excitement doesn’t end there. Teams frantically scramble to sign undrafted free agents in the moments following the final pick.

It was during this scramble that Barney got the phone call he had been waiting for.

“When I was fishing the draft ended and I got the call from the Jets,” Barney said. “I had teams call me right after the Jets, but by then it was too late. It was pretty exciting I was on a boat in the middle of the river so I couldn’t do much jumping around, but it was pretty exciting.”

Barney, a 6 feet 1 inch, 305 pound nose tackle, said that he selected the Jets because leading up to the draft they were the team that had stuck out as his preferred landing spot.

“They seemed the most interested in me and it was a good situation for me,” he said.

From there it was a whirlwind. He had to give the Jets his information and then they worked to book him a flight from the nearest airport so that he could arrive in town for mini camp, which was held from Friday, May 6- Sunday May, 8.

The mini camp was Barney and his fellow rookies introduction to life in the NFL. The three-day camp consisted on meetings to learn the play book and on field drills where the coaches got there first look at their new players.

“The biggest difference was just the playbook and how fast and how you had to retain in the time you had,” Barney said. “The coaching is a lot different. I felt like I did pretty good. I felt like I showed my talent and did some good things up there.”

Now that mini camp is over, Barney’s next step is getting ready for OTAs which start in a couple weeks and then it will be onto training camp where he will compete against 90 other players for 53 rosters spots.