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Tulane Star Lawrence Keys’ Long Road From Cotton Bowl to Lions Deal
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- Tulane Star Lawrence Keys’ Long Road From Cotton Bowl to Lions Deal
(USA TODAY Sports)
For former Tulane Green Wave wide receiver Lawrence Keys, each time he steps on a football field, he's portalled back to one night in 2022 – the night the Green Wave won their first-ever American Conference title.
He will now look to carry some momentum in his playing career from college, to the UFL where he broke out, and now back to the NFL two years later with the Detroit Lions .
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Keys was an instrumental part of a Tulane team that established a championship standard with the title and a subsequent Cotton Bowl win.
For Keys, and likely every player on that team, he told local news station WGNO that the scene of fans storming the field was one of the bigger moments of his career.
He had a crucial catch in the special win, a 43-yard touchdown reception right in front of his mother in the stands.
But now he'll look to build upon those dreams in the big league.
Keys was initially signed as an undrafted rookie free agent by the Buffalo Bills back in 2024. However, an injury in training camp led to his release.
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So, he took a detour to the UFL where he spent two seasons with the Houston Gamblers.
And this last season was one for the books.
Keys led the Gamblers in receiving this past spring and was one of their top threats on special teams.
"I was just doing things with the ball in my hand, you know?" Keys said. "Once the ball got on my hand, just doing special things, making big plays, turning short yards into big yards and touchdowns. So it was just making special plays and just making a play when the opportunity was presented."
That campaign put him back on NFL radars, and one of those teams was the Lions. He landed a deal last month.
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For Keys, he's a winner, and he sees that in Detroit and the ability to grow his career and do big things.
The Lions, in a way, could be seen to make a similar journey that parallels the Green Wave's from when Keys was on the team.
Detroit used to circle the drain as a team that just couldn't figure out the winning standard.
Then the right coach and right group of players came in, set one, and maintained it until it became a culture.
It takes real grit and discipline to pull that type of turnaround off, and Keys is intimately familiar with it as he joins a perennial contender with momentum and back-to-back strong seasons.
It's all a full circle moment for Keys and a true validation of his resilience that he's leaned on to get him back to the NFL two years later.
