On Friday afternoon, the Pittsburgh Steelers announced they signed TE Donald Parham Jr. to a one-year contract. We know offensive coordinator Arthur Smith loves his tight ends, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that the Steelers would take a look at another option. And TE MyCole Pruitt will be a free agent when the new league year starts. So, the Steelers will want more options at the position in 2025.
Parham played for the Los Angeles Chargers from 2020 through 2023, totaling 67 receptions for 764 yards (11.4 yards per catch) and 11 touchdowns. However, the Detroit Lions originally signed him as an undrafted free agent in 2019. He spent 2024 on the Denver Broncos practice squad and did not see any game time. Parham also spent time with the Dallas (now Arlington) Renegades of the XFL in 2020.
But who is Parham? How did he end up following such a circuitous path from Stetson University to Pittsburgh?
Late To The Football Party
Many NFL players have been playing some form of organized football for a very long time. Not Parham, though. He only started playing football for Lake Gibson High School as a senior. And he lined up on both sides of the ball, playing wide receiver and defensive end. In that first taste of organized football, he caught 14 passes for 234 yards and four touchdowns. Not a bad start.
Parham was playing sports the rest of his time in school, though. He was a letterman in basketball for Lake Gibson as well.
It’s a bit surprising that Parham took that long to play football, though. According to his bio on the Stetson University website, he had several family members who played college football and even one who made it to the NFL. His father and one of his uncles played football at Albany State. He had uncles play at N.C. State and Livingstone College, and a cousin played at UCF. One other uncle, Eric Gallon, was a running back at Kansas State before signing with the New England Patriots as an undrafted free agent in 1993.
Impressive Stature
If you looked at Parham, you’d understand why he was a letterman in basketball. He stands at 6-foot-8 and posted a 36-inch vertical. If you want to talk about catch radius, Parham has that in spades. And it’s part of why Senior Bowl executive Jim Nagy was surprised he didn’t get his name called in the 2019 draft. Nagy got an up-close-and-personal look at Parham at the Senior Bowl that year, but an injury kept Parham out of the game itself.
“I was really surprised Donald didn’t get drafted a couple of years ago just because he has rare traits,” said Nagy in an article for Chargers.com after they signed Parham. “When you’re a scout, you’re always looking for things that differentiate you from other players.”
Parham literally and figuratively stands out, even among his fellow NFL players.
Grabbing A Hat At Stetson
Parham’s short high school football career did not lead to many college opportunities. But he got the opportunity to continue playing with the Hatters of Stetson University. He saw only limited action as a freshman in 2015, appearing in four games with no stats. But that didn’t last long. He finished his college career with 180 receptions for 2,591 yards and 20 touchdowns. Thirteen of those touchdowns came in his senior year when he had 85 receptions for 1,319 yards. He was a consensus All-American at the FCS level that year. He also led the country (both FCS and FBS) in receptions per game (9.4) and receiving yards per game (146.6).
Parham finished his Stetson career with the program records for receptions, receiving yards, receiving touchdowns, and all-purpose yards.
Going Renegade
While Parham wasn’t heavily recruited due to his short high school career, he probably figured someone would take a shot on him in the 2019 NFL Draft. No one called his name, and he bounced around a bit as an undrafted free agent with the Lions and the Washington Commanders. But one call stuck: the XFL and the Renegades.
There, Parham joined former Steelers QB Landry Jones and was making quite the statement. Through the first five games of the 2020 season, Parham had 24 catches for 307 yards and four touchdowns.
Landry Jones to Donald Parham for a 65-yard touchdown pic.twitter.com/fBvYQvARrl
— Arif Hasan, but NFL 🏈 (@ArifHasanNFL) February 23, 2020
Then, much like life for many people, the COVID-19 pandemic hit and shut things down. But rather than just slamming one door shut, it opened another door for Parham.
“Literally, the week after the XFL shut down because of COVID, they (the Los Angeles Chargers) had called me up, or called my agent up, and they were like ‘Hey, come on out,'” said Parham in a 2022 interview with Stetson Today. “And the rest is history.”
Back To Stetson To Finish What He Started
Even though Parham played his senior year for the Hatters, he did not graduate in 2018. So, he returned to the same campus where he first made his name in football to fix that. He also took that opportunity to give back to the football program.
“They gave me my real only opportunity to play D-I football, so I just had to, I started here so why not finish, I spent three and a half years here, so why not do the other half here?” said Parham in an interview with Stetson University’s YouTube channel. “You always have guys looking up at you, especially here, being back working out around the guys, with the guys, and even coaching them during the spring. It was really important that they saw the action behind what it takes to be at the next level.”
Stetson doesn’t have much recent football history to draw on. The Hatters may have played their first football game over 100 years ago, in 1884, but Stetson’s football program closed up shop after the 1956 football season and remained dormant until 2013. So Parham joined the Hatters quite early in their second stint and is only one of two Hatters to make it to the NFL since the program restarted, alongside LB Donald Payne.
So, not only did Parham return to Stetson to finish his degree, but he also went back to help give the next group of Hatters players the belief that they might be able to blaze their own trail on the football field.
