Cut after the Packers drafted Jordan Love, Manny Wilkins is fast-tracking a singing career as 5IVE

GREEN BAY - He shared a quarterback room with Aaron Rodgers, he shared an apartment with Allen Lazard, and he shared an enthusiasm for football that allowed him to fill a valuable role for the Green Bay Packers last season, but now, Manny Wilkins is tuning up for a new career.

Fall, after fall, after fall, Wilkins was a quarterback, including last fall in Green Bay. This fall, he's something else.

"I don't want it to be taken as the football player making music," he said. "I don't want that. I want people, when they turn on this video, oh, this isn't 5IVE, Manny Wilkins, the quarterback that was on the Packers. Oh, this is 5IVE, and he plays football? Damn." 

Cut in Green Bay after the Packers drafted Jordan Love, Wilkins is now in California, fast-tracking a singing career, with the same determination that distinguished him as a high schooler and at Arizona State, where he wore a single-digit jersey.

"5IVE, you go talk to all my college roommates, everybody calls me 5IVE," he said. "Music for me was always like, I could just throw on my headphones, lay out and cancel out the world, and it was always that way for me with football. Music is just one of those things that has allowed me to be vocal, talk about my emotions in ways that I would never talk about them sitting down with someone just one on one. My project, INTRO, those are all real moments of my life recently, like how I was feeling, asking a girl, do you have a man? These are real things. It's me, and that was my first time ever musically being able to showcase that side of me."

Wilkins is appreciative and proud of his time on the field but knows that he may never take another competitive snap.

"Plenty of guys, whether it's football, baseball or basketball when they're done with that, or when that decision is made for them, their identity is crushed," he said. "They're crushed. They have no mooring. They are drifting in life. Man, I would be lying to you if I told you that there wasn't nerves, or jitters, or an uneasiness of, damn, what's next? I know I'm going to be successful in life, and no matter what I put my mind to, because I know I live life humbly, the right way, I am not an egotistical person and I'm a student of life, man That's it. That's why."

Wilkins, who describes his music as moody and genuine, is ready for the next play.