Tampa Bay Bucs pick Notre Dame CB Benjamin Morrison in NFL Draft

Benjamin Morrison waited until a workout Monday at his high school alma mater to show his physical progress from last fall’s left hip surgery.

Four days later, the former Notre Dame cornerback became a second-round pick in the NFL Draft. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers selected Morrison with the No. 53 overall pick.

Morrison’s health concerns didn’t prevent him from being Notre Dame’s first selection in this year’s draft. He also became the first Notre Dame cornerback drafted as early as the second round since Bobby Taylor in 1995.

The wait for Morrison to become Notre Dame’s first selection of this year’s draft was the latest the first Irish player has been selected since the 2015 draft when tight end Ben Koyack was ND’s only player picked at No. 229 overall in the seventh round.

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When Morrison received the call from the Buccaneers, he couldn’t hold in his emotions. Months of uncertainty were washed away with a phone call.

“It was surreal,” Morrison told reporters Friday night. “The emotions came out. I got emotional. I cried like a baby, but it was great.”

Morrison didn’t even know the Buccaneers attended his workout Monday. He still thought that was the case after he was drafted, but Mike Biehl, Tampa Bay’s vice president of player personnel, clarified that national scout Andy Speyer was in attendance.

Morrison, who signed with Notre Dame as a recruit out of Phoenix Brophy Prep, will make the leap to the NFL just as his father, Daryl Morrison, did when he was selected in the sixth round of the 1993 draft. The elder Morrison played four seasons with the NFL’s Washington franchise before eventually returning to his hometown of Phoenix with his family and becoming the pastor at Valley Gate Church.

When Daryl Morrison was a rookie in Washington, he was teammates with Todd Bowles, the current head coach of the Buccaneers. The younger Morrison didn’t learn of that until he had a formal meeting with the Bucs at the NFL Scouting Combine earlier this year. Bowles already started coaching up Benjamin Morrison over the phone.

“Just to calm down,” Morrison said of Bowles’ message to him. “I was crying too much.”

If Benjamin Morrison’s NFL career starts like his college career, he should have a longer tenure in pro football than his father. Morrison made his first career start at Notre Dame in the third game of his freshman season. He played in all 13 games and started nine on the way to earning multiple Freshman All-America selections. Morrison was the only player on Notre Dame’s roster to record more than one interception that season, and he managed to pick off six passes. Morrison broke up four more passes and made 33 tackles in his breakout freshman season.

Morrison couldn’t match his interception total as a sophomore in 2023, but he remained a crucial part of the top-ranked passing efficiency defense in the country. Morrison started 11 more games and played in 12 with 31 tackles, 3.5 tackles for loss, three interceptions and 10 pass breakups.

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The 6-foot, 193-pound Morrison received Preseason All-American accolades heading into his junior season last year, but he only managed to play in six games. Morrison left the sixth game, a 49-7 win over Stanford on Oct. 12, early with a hip injury, which eventually required surgery to repair a torn labrum. He totaled 20 tackles and four pass breakups before his season was cut short.

Morrison still opted to leave Notre Dame early and enter the NFL Draft pool following his junior season. He finished his career with 84 tackles, nine interceptions, 18 pass breakups and 4.5 tackles for loss.

Morrison insisted he was healthy earlier this year, but he opted to not go through testing and workouts at the NFL Scouting Combine and Notre Dame’s Pro Day. He used the extra time to prepare for Monday’s workout at Brophy Prep, which didn’t include a 40-yard dash. Morrison focused on football movements instead.

The physical pain that comes with recovery was also paired with mental anguish as times. But Morrison persevered as best he could.

“Some days were harder than others,” Morrison said. ” I can’t get up here and say I was the perfect guy through this process. Even [Thursday] I was frustrated. But at the end of the day, you gotta understand that I can’t allow my desires to get in the way of God’s will for my life.

“I feel like I went through a lot this past year. It made me grow up as a young man. It made me become the man that I am. This whole year has allowed me to step into this opportunity to play for a great organization, a great front office, a great coaching staff, great team. I’m just excited. I’m really excited.”

Morrison cited Pro Football Hall of Fame safety Ed Reed and quarterback Brett Favre as examples of players who successfully dealt with similar hip injuries. Tampa Bay felt confident that Morrison was worth the risk.

“We did the full medical just like we do on every one of these players and our doctors and athletic trainers came away feeling comfortable with it,” Biehl said. “That’s all we need to hear.

“He missed the time this year, [but] before that, I think he missed one game maybe last year for a quad contusion or something like that. At the end of the day, we were comfortable with it and we got a really good player, we feel. We’re just going to see what happens.”

Rivals, who rated Morrison as a four-star recruit, ranked Morrison as the No. 30 cornerback in the 2022 recruiting class. On Friday, Morrison became the fifth cornerback selected in this year’s draft class.

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