Western Michigan wide receiver Corey Davis.

The NFL Draft is always about notable recruits, they’re just usually notable for their high school success and rating, not for a lack thereof.

Yet there they were. On Thursday a pair of unheralded high school recruits reached football Pandora, hearing their names called during the first round of the draft. The No. 5 overall pick was Corey Davis, the first wide receiver taken in the draft despite playing his college football at Western Michigan.

In high school, Davis was a two-star recruit who received a total of two scholarship offers, and just one from a Division I FBS school.

Yet Davis’ relative notoriety would have been comforting for the player selected at No. 13, Temple defensive end/linebacker Haason Reddick, who was raised just a long stone’s throw from the site of Thursday’s draft. Reddick wasn’t recruited or rated by anyone in high school, and even set up a NCSA profile to try and get more attention for himself. When that didn’t pan out he lobbied his way into a walk-on spot with his hometown program, Temple, but even that only lasted for a year, before Reddick was told there was no more room for him.

He didn’t give up, worked all the way up to a starting role and then broke out with strong junior and senior campaigns under coach Matt Rhule to earn a spot at the NFL Combine and, eventually, a top-15 overall selection by the Arizona Cardinals.

So what’s the takeaway from Davis and Reddick’s perseverance? Just ask Tomball defensive tackles coach James Woodard:

OK, so he’s not strictly right about Davis having no stars, but you get the point. Neither Davis or Reddick were all-everything recruits like Alabama linebacker Reuben Foster or USC’s Adoreé Jackson.

In the end, they didn’t have to be. They were better just for who they are.