After having served a two-year church mission in Sweden following high school and before playing linebacker at the University of Utah, where as a senior he was named First-Team All-American and All-Pac-12, Trevor Reilly was a 26-year-old prospect when the Jets chose him in the 2014 NFL Draft.
It's fair to say that day was a bittersweet experience for him.
"I was disappointed that I slipped to the seventh round. I had two medical checks at the Combine, and it probably cost me," Reilly said. "I had a knee surgery right after my senior year, a meniscus cleanup from an already failed meniscus surgery. And then I had an elbow bursitis they cleaned out. Anyway, it kind of put me in a position where I don't think teams wanted to risk money on me because I was definitely a medical concern at my age."
The Jets were a team that considered the risk and reached out to Reilly during the draft.
"I got a call from Jeff Weeks, who was the assistant linebackers coach, and he says, 'Hey, we got a couple draft picks left. For whatever reason we can't take you, we want you to come to the Jets. We think you'd be a good fit.' I said, 'If you've got three draft picks left and you don't take me, there's no way in hell I'm coming to the Jets.' And I hung the phone up," Reilly said.
Once New York selected Reilly, Weeks pushed redial on his phone and called him again.
"He was like, 'You sly dog! You called our bluff.' I think he knew they were probably going to take me. He was hedging just in case," Reilly said. "(Head coach Rex Ryan) said he could draft one guy; he'd get the last pick. I think he scoured tape and picked me.
"I was the guy that he thought represented how he wanted it to be. So there's a sense of honor as well as of disappointment (of being picked later than I expected). But I was excited and I was honored to be Jeff Weeks' guy."
After reporting to training camp, Reilly also felt fortunate to have veteran linebackers Calvin Pace, David Harris, Demario Davis, and Nick Bellore as guys he could go to. As well as veteran quarterback Michael Vick.
"Mike, because I had a brother who died when I was six, and the last shoe he wore was the Turf Vick," Reilly said. "And my brother's name who died was Jett. So it's really poetic, going to the Jets.
"And so Mike Vick was the guy I made a point to go make sure I carried his shoulder pads after practice and to ask him questions. I served him as an elder. And the linebackers in general, the whole room, I tried to serve them as if they were my father. We had a good relationship.
"And then the first day of camp, I came out and I was laying wood. I made sure I put down for Jeff, and that I represented him because I knew he staked his reputation on me."
The Jets didn't enjoy the best season in 2014, finishing with a 4-12 record. Reilly and his teammates felt the frustration, and he saw that they weren't the only ones – that the owner, Woody Johnson, shared the feeling.
"I remember that we lost (in Week 4) to Detroit in a terrible fourth quarter situation. We blew a lead," Reilly said. "Me and Jason Babin, we skipped the handshakes and walk in the locker room, and there's (offensive coordinator) Marty (Mornhinweg) walking in first. Woody greets everybody and Woody two hands shoves him! Okay, nothing abnormal. I've seen coaches fight before, right? But to see an owner care that much, I'm sure he wasn't happy with Marty.
"And as the season went on it's not like we didn't try hard. I think there was one game where we really laid an egg, that was against the Chargers (in Week 5, when we lost 31-0). But other than that, I thought we put a good effort pretty much every week. But yeah, that Marty thing with Woody, this is some serious stuff, dude. This is not fun."
The Jets made a fresh start the following year when Mike Maccagnan became the new GM and Todd Bowles took over as the head coach. Meanwhile during the OTAs, Reilly discovered something to do after the daily workouts and began driving for Uber.
"When I had free time, I said, 'How can I make money and not have to work too hard?' So I bought a Crown Vic police interceptor," Reilly said. "It gave me some credibility when I was in some rough neighborhoods, people left me alone. At least I thought they did. I did a lot of driving to the Newark Airport and New York City. Had some close calls, probably ran some drugs at some point here or there, unknowingly.
"But I asked people about the Jets and I'd get the street sense of what was going on from some people. They would tell me, unknowing who I was, how they felt about what was going on. And once in a while I'd hear some pretty good stuff."
When the regular season began, the Jets went on a roll, won six games more than the previous season, and finished with a 10-6 record.
"I still say we were the best team in the last 15 or 20 years of the Jets, and I was the special teams MVP of that tenure. The feather in my cap, right? It's about the highlight of my career and pretty much sums up my career. I was the special teams MVP on a 10-win team that didn't make playoffs," said Reilly, who was released by the Jets at the beginning of the 2016 campaign and would then spend time with Miami and New England over the next two seasons.
In 2018, Reilly returned to the Utah campus to finish his classwork and earn a degree. And while he was doing so, the football coaches asked him to help out and see if coaching might be something he'd want to pursue.
"So I went in as an undergrad assistant, which gave me all kinds of benefits because at the time, technically, I could practice with the team," he said. "I used to suit up, giving scout team looks and keeping myself ready in case a team called."
After that season with the Utes, Reilly played for the Salt Lake Stallions in the Alliance of American Football. Later, connections with Dennis Thurman (who coached in the AAF) and Weeks led to Reilly's joining them on Deion Sanders' staff at Jackson State in 2021 as a graduate assistant.
"And then when we went to Colorado (in 2023). Prime asked me to be the special teams coordinator," Reilly said. "So I spent a year at Colorado with Prime doing that, and then we ran out of money. The NIL happened at Jackson State and we did well, but we were a big fish in a small pond. Well, we got to Colorado and their finances were so messed up. They had no money and they were expecting them to win.
"That became my spearhead. I said, 'I really don't care too much about recruiting anymore until we have money. Stop sending me players to look at until we have money to afford them. Let's not put the cart before the horse.'
"That led me to Saudi Arabia. I need quick money and I need it fast. There's a story in the New York Times about it. I don't need to go into the details, but more or less, I met with the Saudi government on a whim. But because of Prime's power, Prime's status, they checked me out. They were willing to meet and they wanted to have continued discussions, and it kind of freaked out a few people at C.U.
"So I just said, 'Well, you have a couple choices. You can either run a sweepstake or do some type of fundraising event, or we can take a partner. But right now, we're doing neither. We're asking for donations. That model's dead. You have to run this thing like a business. We need recurring revenue every year that we can count on, so we can make a budget and a plan.'"
Frustrated with what he called NIL instability at Colorado, Reilly decided to leave the team in August 2024. Now committed to helping young athletes, he's working with the Junior College Prep League.
"We have 18 teams all over the country. They need players, so I partnered with them," Reilly said. "And I'm trying to raise the level of high school football on the Big Island of Hawaii. I've got the kids I'm coaching, hoping to send them to this league. It's really a prep school. The East Coast has all kinds of these schools. Don't have them out west, not really down south.
"It's just getting young men to learn the values of football and get them onto the next level. We can find you a place to play. It's pushing kids into the next level of football, in schooling, and we're working specifically with trade schools now. It's really helping us in Hawaii. Kids don't want to go to school; they want to go to trade school and play football. You can do that now."
Making his home in Hawaii with his wife, Lucia, Reilly has three children from a previous marriage: Shayn, Nelli, and Jett. He also has a stepson, Lucca.
