The first thing you notice about Jaylen Watson is his smile.
It’s the smile of a man who knows exactly how strange the road behind him looks in the rearview mirror.
On Thursday at the Rams‘ facility in Woodland Hills, Watson was introduced as one of the team’s newest cornerbacks.
It was there, with a room full of reporters, that he reflected on his unconventional journey from attending community college in Ventura, to working with his mother at a Wendy’s restaurant in Augusta, Georgia.
The first thing you notice about Jaylen Watson is his smile.
New Rams cornerback Jaylen Watson (35) won two Super Bowls with the Chiefs.
He reflected on his unconventional journey from attending community college in Ventura, to working with his mother at a Wendy’s restaurant in Augusta, Georgia.
“I hated it. It was terrible,” Watson said, laughing about the year he spent working at Wendy’s — where his boss just happened to be his mother.
Watson’s journey wasn’t glamorous, it wasn’t linear and it definitely wasn’t handed to him.
Before the NFL. Before the Super Bowl rings. Before he became coveted in free agency. He was just a kid from Augusta trying to figure out what came next after high school.
Watson graduated from Lucy C. Laney High School with talent but without the golden ticket of a Division I scholarship. As a kid, he wanted to be an actor or a rapper. No matter what he was going to pursue in life, his mother would support him.
“I hated it. It was terrible,” Watson said, laughing about the year he spent working at Wendy’s — where his boss just happened to be his mother.
“She’s like my Super Woman,” Watson said about his mother.
After high school, Watson attended Ventura College, about an hour north of Los Angeles. It was there that he quietly rebuilt his football life. As a sophomore he recorded 43 tackles, 13 pass breakups, four interceptions and a fumble recovery. Suddenly colleges were interested in him. He signed with USC and planned to transfer to the Trojans for his junior season.
Except Watson didn’t qualify academically and just like that his football dreams were detoured again.
He went home to Augusta, moved back in with his mother and tried to find work. Nothing stuck until his mom — the manager of a local Wendy’s — gave him the only offer on the table.
Come work for me.
For $7.25 an hour.
“I love her to death, but it was terrible,” Watson admitted with a grin. “You get no breaks from your mom. You go to work, you’re with your mom. You go home, you’re with your mom. You can’t even talk about work.”
Then came the line that had the entire room laughing.
“You might get mad, you might not have a good day at work, then you go home. Guess who’s home?”
The Chiefs selected cornerback Jaylen Watson in the seventh round of the 2022 NFL Draft.
But buried beneath the humor was something deeper — the kind of realization that reshapes a person.
“Just seeing all the sacrifices she put in … it kind of made me push harder and strive to be something in my life.”
And it’s that motivation that has sent Watson from an unrecruited high school kid, to seventh-round draft pick, to a two-time Super Bowl winner and now a three-year contract worth more than $51 million. His mother will never have to work at Wendy’s again. That’s generational wealth.
After working at Wendy’s, Watson got his second football life at Washington State University.
In the 2022 draft, the Chiefs selected Washington cornerback Trent McDuffie in the first round. Then they grabbed Joshua Williams in the fourth. Watson thought his dream of playing for the Chiefs had slammed shut.
“I was like, ‘I’m not going to the Chiefs,’” he joked.
And then Kansas City drafted him anyway in the seventh round.
What followed was the kind of football résumé most players dream about — three trips to the Super Bowl and two championship rings.
Not bad for a former Wendy’s employee making minimum wage.
And then Kansas City drafted him anyway in the seventh round.
Now Watson finds himself back in Southern California, where his football story began.
“I had all my JUCO friends hit me up that are still out here,” he said. “I’m pretty familiar with California. I love the weather, and everyone’s so nice here.”
The Rams signed Watson because their secondary was a problem last season. A glaring one. A season-long headache that ultimately kept them from finishing the job in January and February.
And make no mistake — that one defensive stop might have changed everything.
The Rams signed Watson because their secondary was a problem last season.
So the Rams went shopping for toughness and experience. They brought in Watson and reunited him with McDuffie, whom they traded for and then made the highest-paid cornerback in NFL history, hoping the championship DNA from Kansas City translates to Los Angeles.
Watson thought the opportunity might disappear once McDuffie arrived.
“I really wanted to go to the Rams this offseason,” Watson admitted. “Then, they traded for Trent, and I was like, ‘I’m not going to the Rams.’”
If the Rams are serious about getting over the Super Bowl hump, they might need a few more players who remember exactly what it feels like to work the drive-through window while getting yelled at by your boss who is also your mom.
That perspective is something Watson never forgot.
And now he’s back where the journey started — only this time, he’s walking into SoFi Stadium instead of a fast-food kitchen.
That’s not just a comeback story.
That’s a full-circle one.
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