Donald Earl Davis Jr. (born December 17, 1972) is a former American football player and former team chaplain for the

New England Patriots The New England Patriots are a professional American football team based in the Greater Boston area. They compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) AFC East, East divisio ...

High school years

Davis attended Olathe South High School in Olathe, Kansas, and was a student and a letterman in

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

, basketball, and track & field. In football, as a senior, he was a first-team All-League selection and a second-team All-Metropolitan selection.

College years

Davis was a three-year starter for the University of Kansas, and finished his superb career with 238 tackles (20 tackles for loss) and 9.5 sacks. Don Davis graduated with a degree in Human Development in 1995.

NFL playing career

He was signed as a free agent in 1996 season by the New Orleans Saints. Davis played with the Saints until the middle of the 1998 season when he was traded to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He would remain with Tampa Bay through the 2000 season. In

2001 The September 11 attacks against the United States by Al-Qaeda, which Casualties of the September 11 attacks, killed 2,977 people and instigated the global war on terror, were a defining event of 2001. The United States led a Participants in ...

Davis began play for the St. Louis Rams, where he would remain through

2002 File:2002 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 2002 Winter Olympics are held in Salt Lake City; Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother and her daughter Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon die; East Timor gains East Timor independence, indepe ...

. Then in

2003 File:2003 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The crew of STS-107 perished when the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during reentry into Earth's atmosphere; SARS became an epidemic in China, and was a precursor to SARS-CoV-2; A des ...

Davis was signed by his final team, the

, whom he would stay with for four seasons. He earned two

Super Bowl The Super Bowl is the annual final playoff game of the National Football League (NFL) to determine the league champion. It has served as the final game of every NFL season since 1966, replacing the NFL Championship Game. Since 2022, the game ...

rings with the New England Patriots in 2003 and 2004.

Coaching career

Following the 2006 season, Davis retired and joined the Patriots' strength and conditioning coaches as an assistant coach. He left the organization prior to the

2008 File:2008 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Lehman Brothers went bankrupt following the Subprime mortgage crisis; Cyclone Nargis killed more than 138,000 in Myanmar; A scene from the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing; ...

season to pursue Christian ministry. He remained with the Patriots as the team chaplain. He is currently the National Football League Players Association's senior director of player affairs.

References

External links

New England Patriots profile
{{DEFAULTSORT:Davis, Don 1972 births Living people Sportspeople from Olathe, Kansas Players of American football from Kansas American chaplains American strength and conditioning coaches American football linebackers Kansas Jayhawks football players New Orleans Saints players Tampa Bay Buccaneers players St. Louis Rams players New England Patriots players New England Patriots coaches 21st-century African-American sportspeople 20th-century African-American sportspeople