Cornerback · Atlanta Falcons

Malcolm DeWalt IV

He quit football, blended protein powder, and needed one conversation with his dad.

Malcolm DeWalt IV was in a factory in Bremerton, Washington, cutting bags and blending protein products for a company called Metagenics, and football was behind him. That is where this starts — not at a signing table, not on a depth chart, but at a job that had nothing to do with any of it.

It did not end up that way. But to understand why it almost did, you have to go back to Olympic High School, where DeWalt played his senior year as a running back and receiver. He broke his collarbone. Recruiting boards, which are unforgiving about things like this, quietly moved on. He enrolled at Snow Community College in Utah, trying to keep something alive, but a coaching change hit the program and the COVID pandemic hit everything else, and DeWalt never played a game there. He went home.

The factory job was not a detour. At the time, it was the plan. A lot of people who almost played college football end up somewhere like that, and the world does not stop to notice. DeWalt's father, Malcolm DeWalt III, noticed. He sat his son down and told him, in the direct way a parent sometimes has to be, that the talent his son had was real — that most people never get the shot he still might have. That conversation is documented; what it cost both of them to have it is not something any source records. What the dossier shows is that it worked.

A former high school coach, now at Butte College in California, reached out. There was a path back. In 2022, DeWalt took it, and at Butte he was switched from offense to cornerback — a new position, a new school, a new version of what his career could look like. He played two seasons there, then two more at Akron.

The 2026 NFL Draft came and went without his name called. Four teams called after. He had options: the Browns, the Packers, the Seahawks, and the Falcons. He chose Atlanta.

The call came in while he was bowling with his father and friends. He signed on April 25, 2026.

Bremerton is a Navy town on Puget Sound, not a place that sends many players to the NFL. The path DeWalt took — collarbone, pandemic, factory floor, junior college, position switch, two more years, undrafted — is longer and stranger than most. He made it anyway, and his dad was there when the phone rang.

Content sourced from publicly available information. Gripd is an independent fan platform not affiliated with the NFL or any team.