Three games out of a 16-game season seems minuscule, a blip on the surface of an NFL season, but for Pierre Walters, those three games represent a gigantic step for his playing career.

What’s more, those three games represent the type of success a player from a small school can have with a lot of hard work. And it represents long-term success of a football program translating into exposure and accomplishments by one of its star athletes.

Yup, Pierre Walters sure has made it.

Talking to him Tuesday, it’s clear that when he looks back at where he came from and where he is today, it’s still pretty surreal.

“It’s really unbelievable,” said Walters from his Forest Park home, where the former Eastern standout started his playing career at St. Joseph’s High School. “Just the experience every week. It was everything I expected and more.”

The thing that made Walters successful at Eastern was his relentlessness and inability to ever settle for mediocrity. Those same features make his long-term success with the Kansas City Chiefs seem likely.

But while the three games and one tackle Walters registered this season are a minor accomplishment during a brutal, four month NFL schedule, it’s a step in the right direction when you look at where Walters came from.

Eastern players don’t exactly litter NFL rosters. In fact, other than Walters, the only other NFL player from Eastern is Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo. Sure, our coaches are plentiful, but to make an NFL roster is accomplishment enough.

Couple that with the fact that Walters was undrafted out of college, and only a handful of undrafted players make active rosters each season, and Walters has already accomplished worlds more than anyone could have expected.

But his best might be yet to come.

Walters is on one of the youngest teams in the NFL, and learning under such veterans as Super Bowl winner Mike Vrabel will prove invaluable to him.

Likewise, with a young team with so much inexperience, it makes the opportunities for Walters’ work ethic to pay off that much more likely.

But he knows he has work to do.

With a season under his belt and more to come, he sounds hungry to get back out on the field and continue to improve.

The relentlessness he showed at Eastern appears to still be there, and the best appears yet to come.

Collin Whitchurch can be reached at 581-7944 or cfwhitchurch@eiu.edu.