Gerald Willis II had no way to explain it.



Reached by phone Saturday night as he was about to board a flight home to New Orleans, he couldn’t fathom how 254 players had been selected in this weekend’s NFL Draft and yet his son, Gerald III, a second-team AP All-American defensive tackle who won the University of Miami’s team’s MVP award this past season, was not among them.



“I have no clue what happened, why he fell,” the tugboat captain who works on the Mississippi River told The Athletic.



“I mean what else does a kid have to do to prove himself? I mean, I guess he didn’t do enough. But you know, at the end of the day, that’s what God wanted. God wanted him to work hard for it. It never came easy for him anyway. He was built for this. It may taste a little bad right now, but he’ll be all right.”



Willis, who led the ACC and all defensive tackles nationally in tackles for loss (18) as a...