When Lions running back Zach Zenner was at South Dakota State, people told him he wouldn’t make it in the NFL, and so he majored in biology with a plan to start medical school when his college career ended.
But Zenner, who said when he was in college that he just hoped to make an NFL practice squad before becoming a surgeon, is now playing well enough for the Lions that he expects to have a long NFL career ahead of him.
Still, Zenner has decided to keep his medical options open. With the idea that he might still become a doctor some day, Zenner is working on a medical research project, studying ultrasounds of rat arteries, at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Detroit.
“I think it’s important to [do these kind of projects], not only for the career aspect of it -- kind of building the resume -- but also, mentally, for the brain,” Zenner told the Detroit Free Press. “It’s a totally different type of mental exercise than preparing for a defense. You can make similarities between the two in just the fact that football isn’t just a running straight, ramming your head against brick wall over and over. [There are] a lot of mental aspects to football, as well, but it’s just totally different from that.”
Zenner now says he isn’t sure whether he’ll go to medical school. It’s entirely possible that by the time he retires from football he’ll have enough money that he doesn’t have to work again, and that he’ll be pretty old to just be starting in a field that requires several years of schooling. But with his offseason work, he’s keeping his options open.