After bet on himself busts, LB Turner unexpectedly finds what he was looking for with Detroit Lions

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Allen Park — Not every bet on yourself ends up a winner. That’s been linebacker Ezekiel Turner’s reality the past several months.

His confidence was rooted in a long history of defying the odds. Underrecruited coming out of Glen Burnie High School, just out of Baltimore, Md., Turner chose to move across the country and play for a JUCO in Los Angeles instead of settling for an offer to play D-II.

“I knew I wanted to play big-time college football,” Turner said. “I knew I could play D-I.”

He was at Los Angeles Pierce College for just six months and played eight games before D-I programs started inquiring about the safety. Because grades were never an issue, he didn’t have to wait to transfer, but the window to make a decision was narrow. He knocked out three visits back-to-back-to-back, checking out three programs that piqued his interest above the others: Illinois, Oklahoma and Washington, in that order.

He loved Oklahoma and could see himself playing for the Sooners, but the visit to Washington hit differently. In addition to the energy surrounding incoming coach Chris Peterson — who had racked up a 92-12 record at Boise State — Turner was drawn to a young and talented defensive back room that included future NFL talent Budda Baker, Byron Murphy, Trent McDuffie and Sidney Jones.

“All those guys were my age, plus, I immediately fell in love with Seattle,” Turner said.

In three years at the school, Turner never ascended to being a full-time starter for the Huskies, but he played quite a bit, particularly in 2017, his final season. That year he started three games and logged 500 defensive snaps for a squad that won 10 games.

Where Turner thrived was on special teams, winning the program’s Player of the Week four times. And he benefited from outstanding coaching, both at his position and on special teams. His position coach, Jimmy Lake, is now the defensive coordinator of the Atlanta Falcons. The special teams coordinator, Jeff Choate, has ascended to a head coaching job, first at Montana State and currently at Nevada.

Turner’s abilities on special teams, developed by Choate, would prove to be his path to an NFL opportunity.

“They were big on it at Washington,” Turner said. “Our kickoff team would be the starters on defense. We had Buddha Baker on kickoff. We took a lot of pride in kickoff and I bought into that. I'm like, 'I'm going to go crazy on this.' They took a lot of time teaching different techniques and running different drills in practice. That really helped me a lot, especially coming into the league. Washington really prepared for me what I've seen in the NFL.”

Turner signed with the Arizona Cardinals as an undrafted free agent. And while special teams are the ticket for many undrafted players, he earned a job in large part due to his adaptability.

During the preseason of his rookie year, the Cardinals suffered multiple injuries at linebacker. Needing depth for the fourth and final exhibition game, they looked to their biggest safety, the 212-pound Turner, asking him to play a position he hadn’t before. He would go on to record 11 tackles and a sack in that game.

His ticket was punched and the position switch became permanent. The Cardinals wouldn’t regret it. Turner would finish second in the NFL with 15 special teams tackles as a rookie. And he would remain a fixture as a four-core player the next six seasons, logging at least 293 snaps on special teams five of the next six years.

His craziest campaign came in 2020. He not only finished top 10 in special teams tackles but also blocked two punts and caught a pass on a fake.

But like the underrecruited high school safety who wouldn’t settle for playing D-II football, Turner wanted more. He felt he had shown promise in limited defensive snaps during his time in Arizona and pined for a larger role. But despite three coaching changes during his time in the desert, he couldn’t find his way onto the field more frequently.

Instead of sticking with the status quo, simply remaining a special teams force for the Cardinals, Turner placed that wager on himself that he could do more somewhere else. He hit free agency this offseason and quickly accepted an offer from an NFC West rival, the San Francisco 49ers.

But for the first time in a while, things didn’t work out for Turner. He didn’t even make it to the end of training camp before the 49ers cut ties.

“When I was in San Fran, that was the first time I got cut,” Turner said. “I was like, 'Oh, this is new.' Better it be in year seven than my undrafted rookie year. By year seven, I had made a little money and got a little stability. That was the hand I was being dealt and I had to remember this was my choice, I wanted to test out the waters and this is what it came down to.”

Two weeks later, Turner landed in Houston, which lasted a month. Then it was on to Seattle, where put himself on the map with the Huskies, but things didn’t click with the Seahawks either. They let him go a little more than two weeks after he arrived.

“It was humbling,” Turner said. “You get to a place where you're thinking, 'Do I ever want to continue to play football? What does the future look like?’ It was a lot of adversity, which I hadn't experienced since early in my career. I didn't have any offers out of high school, went to JUCO, and went undrafted, I had seen adversity, but not quite like that since I'd been in the league. I had been with one team my whole career.”

When the Detroit Lions reached out a little more than a week after the brief Seattle stint came to an end, Turner wasn’t sure. He was mentally fatigued. He'd been on four rosters in a matter of a few months. He wasn’t ready to be chewed up and spit out again. But his agent convinced him this would be different. Under current leadership, Detroit doesn’t churn the roster, and this was a franchise that valued special teams. It could be an ideal fit given the otherwise undesirable circumstances of the past several months.

“I get here, I'm like, 'Oh, this is the right organization,’” Turner said.

Little did he know, he had an advocate in the building in special teams coordinator Dave Fipp.

“He’s a player that I’ve respected for a long time,” Fipp said. “When I was in Philly, and he was in Arizona, we played against each other a handful of games and I always thought he was a very good player. But even better than that for us was actually just the fit.”

“…Just the way he covers, the way he plays the game is very similar to Jalen Reeves-Maybin, so it was like just a natural slide in and fit,” Fipp said. “So, it was an easy decision for us, he’s super smart and intelligent, I got a lot of confidence and faith and trust in him already in a very short period of time. The special teams coach from Arizona sent me a text message and said, ‘I don’t know if I trust another guy more than I trust him.’ And that’s a guy I respect quite a bit.”

What Fipp left unsaid about those previous battles against Turner is one game in 2020. In that matchup, he caught the aforementioned pass on a fake punt and also blocked one. It was enough that he remembered Fipp going out of his way to find him after the game and compliment him on the performance.

Initially signed to Detroit's practice squad, Turner played against the Texans just days after arriving. He’s since been signed to the active roster, and as injuries have mounted for the Lions, his role has expanded. That includes a long-coveted playing time on defense.

“Here’s one thing that I think we do here that’s somewhat different than a lot of teams,” defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn said. “We have true competition periods and that can be one-on-one pass rush, that can be covering receivers versus DBs, linebackers versus running backs, then we get a chance to see exactly what the players do and that’s why I say so many times, ‘You have to earn your keep here,’ and we practice ways to where you have to earn your keep.

“You watch him in those one-on-one situations, we see that we have a guy that’s strong, that’s fast, that’s agile, that has a knack for covering running backs and tight ends,” Glenn continued. “And once we see that, I’m like, ‘We have to put this player out there and let him play.’ And he’s been doing a good job for us in that situation.”

Turner saw 22 snaps on defense last week — the fourth-highest single-game total of his career — plus another 18 on special teams, where he’s effectively replaced Reeves-Maybin after the 2023 Pro Bolwer suffered a neck injury that required a stint on injured reserve. Turner even recorded his first sack of his career on the win-preserving drive against Chicago on Thanksgiving, getting home on a blitz and splitting the stop with defensive end Za’Darius Smith.

This was what Turner imagined when he left Arizona, just not the road he envisioned to get here. It wasn’t a Point A to B journey, but a rocky route that tested his ability to persevere. It fits nicely with an organization that values grit.

And with the Lions suffering two more injuries at linebacker since his arrival, losing starter and captain Alex Anzalone (broken arm) and replacement Malcolm Rodriguez (torn ACL), Turner figures to maintain a meaningful role down the stretch of the season for a Super Bowl contender. Not bad for a guy who has played in a single postseason game in seven years.

Who knows, maybe this temporary stop will end up becoming something more permanent. He certainly hopes so.

“Absolutely,” Turner said. “This organization is second to none. I would love to continue to play here if the opportunity presents itself. I'm blessed to be here with this opportunity the coaches and front office have given me.”