What Brennan Presley Said After Hail Mary Catch, Has He Done Enough to Make an NFL Roster?

Brennan Presley’s habit of making the highlight reel hasn’t stopped at the NFL level.

“He does everything well,” former Cowboy corner Korie Black said last season. “If you need the ball, you need a first down, he is always open. Even if he’s not open, he still can make a great catch. So I mean, he’s definitely a league player.”

Presley backed that up over the weekend with a fourth-down Hail Mary catch.

GRAB THAT PRESLEY ‼️

📺@ABC7 | 📲 https://t.co/4beUdm4vkg pic.twitter.com/Ekm7T3rYPp

— Los Angeles Rams (@RamsNFL) August 17, 2025

“Pre-snap, I felt really good,” Presley said in a video shared by LA Rams SI reporter Brock Vierra. “I mean, I came off in my man. I thought it was man (coverage). So I’m like, okay, I have a pretty good chance to get the ball. The safety rotated, so I knew at that point, if he was going to throw it, it’s gonna be just a contested catch.

“And then once I saw him kinda scramble and then like throw it up, I had dropped the fade the possession before, so in my head, I was like, I gotta go get this. Like, there’s no other way to think about it, if, ands, or buts, I just gotta go get this ball, this ball is mine. Just because I felt so bad about dropping the one earlier, so I had the opportunity to go up and get it and I did.”

Oklahoma State’s all-time receptions leader knew he was likely going to have to prove himself all over again despite exceeding expectations in college.

“Yeah I feel like I proved that (I can play in the NFL). … At the end of the day they’re going to look at the tape and the measurables and stuff like that,” Presley said ahead of the draft. “And it is their decision, but that is why I say I have no regrets because at the end of the day I know I did everything possible to give myself a shot at playing at the next level.”

Following the end of his Oklahoma State career, Presley talked about all the hidden work that goes unseen throughout the year to prepare for games.

“Most of the time it sucks, honestly, because it is on a summer night you want to go get ice cream with your friends, chill, hang out at the house,” Presley said. “You don’t want to be at the indoor catching 300 balls and stuff like that and running a ton of routes. … All that stuff, it doesn’t feel good in the moment.

“But it feels good when you do get out here and you’re able to make those plays, or it is just like the stuff that you practice on, you’re like, oh crap, I worked at this, so I know I can do this. It gives you that confidence to go out there and play hard.”

All that hard work certainly appears to be paying off for Presley right now. After two NFL preseason games, the former Cowboy ranks sixth in the league with 113 receiving yards and a touchdown on eight receptions.

Despite that stat line, and some big plays, Rams Wire reporter Cameron DaSilva projects the Rams will only keep six receivers on the 53-man roster to begin the season, and none of those spots appear to belong to Presley. As crazy as that sounds, it’s not unheard of for preseason superstars to find themselves on the wrong side of 53 when cuts get announced.

It’s tough tracking down all these transactions years later, but here’s what I believe happened to the last two groups of top 10 NFL preseason receivers. Four guys made the roster as draft picks, so teams had various levels of money invested in those guys. Another 5.5 more preseason studs joined them, so roughly half the top 10 make rosters. Another 7.5 guys made practice squads (one guy seemed to split 50-50 between active and practice squad rosters).

The NFL as a whole only cut three completely, but even one of those guys managed to wind up on a practice squad after a few months. The most important takeaway I took from digging around NFL transactions all afternoon was that many of these guys get cut by their initial team but quickly land on a practice squad somewhere else (probably because they impressed in the preseason).

So maybe Presley can stay in LA, but either way, a strong showing in his final preseason game at noon Saturday in Cleveland likely carries a decent bit of weight regarding his professional future.

If any of that was on Presley’s mind following his recent preseason game, it didn’t show. Throughout the interview, he flashed that same positive attitude and love for his new teammates that he showed for the Cowboys throughout his career.

“The amount of trust that we have in each other is kind of what sets I think this team apart,” Presley said to Rams reporters. “Because everybody trusts one another, whether it is O-line trusting us, we trust them to protect, Stetty (quarterback Stetson Bennett) giving a great ball. The trust is all around us, just a great team performance.”