photo by: AP Photo/Charlie Riedel

Kansas tight end Mason Fairchild runs the ball during the second half of an NCAA college football game against Oklahoma Saturday, Oct. 28, 2023, in Lawrence. Kansas won 38-33.

It was a charmed few months on the football field for former Kansas tight end Mason Fairchild.

At the end of the fall he had won a state championship as part of the coaching staff for his alma mater, the powerhouse Andale High School; by the end of the spring, he had become a United Football League champion as a player.

Indeed, after a brief series of stints with the New Orleans Saints prior to the 2024 NFL season, Fairchild got a full-fledged professional opportunity in the United Football League.

That was at least once he actually got in touch with the DC Defenders. The league had first come calling via Facebook Messenger, which, Fairchild admitted in a recent interview with the Journal-World, he doesn’t check very much.

But the parties did indeed get in touch, and six months after he signed, Fairchild — who saw some of his most significant playing time of the season in the championship game and made one catch for 14 yards — and his Defenders beat the Michigan Panthers 58-34 on Saturday to claim the UFL title.

“It’s hard not to win when you have so many great players, coaches, staff and all that around you,” he said.

The former Kansas tight end will now return to his coaching gig at Andale as he awaits the next professional chance — “playing the waiting game, staying in shape, trying to fix those things that you weren’t really happy with in the UFL season.”

Fairchild hadn’t known much about the UFL prior to joining the Defenders in December.

He wasn’t hearing a lot from the professional ranks in the wake of his Saints tenure, from which he said he learned most of all that the NFL is a business: He was signed, waived, re-signed, waived again as part of final cuts and then added to New Orleans’ practice squad, only for the Saints to replace him with another tight end who had been waived by the Browns.

“Getting released after five days with not a lot of opportunity … you have to perform on the reps you do get and make the most of them because you never know when it might be your last rep,” he said.

His father Tim had first asked him what he thought about the UFL, to which he responded, “I don’t know much about it, but I would obviously take that opportunity to play.”

The UFL is, after all, striving to be a “league of opportunity” — a phrase that Fairchild noted seemingly extended to the Defenders’ coaches, several of whom left along the way, before they ultimately won the title with an interim head coach, Shannon Harris.

In the early going, it didn’t seem like DC was actually going to let Fairchild play very much.

“The beginning of the year, I was inactive for the first two games,” he said, “and that was very frustrating because I felt like what I was putting on tape in practice was deserving of being out there.”

He worked his way into greater action, though, in short-yardage situations and on special teams — which is also how he foresees being used if he can make it back to the NFL.

Fairchild played about 33 snaps per game, worked extensively as a run blocker and had five total catches for 40 yards on the year. He recorded one particularly strong piece of tape on special teams when he forced a fumble against St. Louis in the regular-season finale, ripping the ball from kick returner Frank Darby.

“That was a really swampy game,” he recalled. “The ball was wet and all that stuff. My dad’s a defensive coordinator at my high school so I’ve always had a little of that in me, at least I’d like to think so. Once one of our guys actually made that initial blow on him I could see that the ball was starting to slip out a little bit.”

Over the course of the year, Fairchild found ways to grow and develop.

He mentioned that he learned from the leader of the tight end group, spring football veteran and former Tennessee Titan Briley Moore — though joked that he “kind of had to take everything he said with a grain of salt” because Moore was also a former Kansas State Wildcat. He also cited Super Bowl-winning receivers like Cornell Powell and Jaydon Mickens among those with beneficial veteran experience.

For now, for Fairchild, it’s back to helping out wherever he’s needed at Andale, which last year in part meant drawing up pass plays for an offense that, he said, runs the ball 97% of the time.

“I’m trying to modernize it a little bit,” he said, “and get a little crazy with the passing game stuff.”

As far as his playing career goes, he said he’s happy with what he put on tape this year in DC. He’ll now await the next team that reaches out to him. This time, perhaps he’ll link up with them on the first try.