All Peter Clarke needed to jumpstart his football career was a Twitter account.
The London, United Kingdom native first developed an interest in the sport at age 14 when he played 5-on-5 flag football for the London Warriors program. It wasn’t until age 17 when he exchanged his flags for pads and participated in his first 11-on-11 football game. The biggest player on almost every field he played on, Clarke still recalls the first hit he absorbed. It was that moment he realized tackle football was his calling.
“It felt a lot different, but it was fun,” Clarke said. “I was always a bigger kid, so contact was something I looked for. Sometimes you get some penalties for roughness in flag football and you just can’t wait to put the pads on.”
After honing his skills in the London Warriors program, Clarke applied for the NFL Academy — a high school established by the NFL in 2019 with campuses in London and Australia. Its mission is to develop international athletes into American college football players, and eventually, professional prospects. At 6’6” and over 200 pounds, Clarke fit the mold perfectly, and the Academy began the process of building him into a “prototypical tight end.”
Once accepted into the NFL Academy, Clarke’s football ability began to skyrocket, as did his recruitment. However, one unforeseen obstacle suddenly derailed the process. The COVID-19 pandemic closed travel between the US and UK, and Clarke couldn’t showcase his newly-developed skills in front of American coaches.
So he started tweeting instead.
“Everything was shut down,” Clarke said. “You couldn’t get into America. You couldn’t get over here. You couldn’t do certain things back home, so everything was done through Twitter. Things that happened in the spring — practice tape, drills — anything you could record and upload to the internet is what we used to try and get recruited. And it built a lot of hype, and it did help.”
Clarke tweeted videos of his NFL Combine-style testing, showcasing his measurables such as his 4.68-second 40-yard dash, 315-pound squat, and 4.44-second shuttle run. He also regularly uploaded grainy, zoomed-out highlights of his most spectacular catches on the field. Clarke even posted 26 seconds of his NFL Academy spring game footage in the mentions of nine different UTSA assistant coaches, desperately hoping to get noticed by Division I programs during the travel ban.
Although actively posting highlights and tagging coaches helped him get noticed, there were still doubts about the late-bloomer tight end.
“Everyone was like, ‘Is this kid really 6’6”? Is he really this? Is he really that?’ And it was a lot of doubt, right?” Clarke recalled. “And then I was finally able to get out to one or two camps when the borders opened back up because of COVID. A few schools were like, ‘Hey, we don’t really trust the competition you play against. We don’t trust where you come from and the level of football that you understand.’”
When the borders reopened, Clarke embarked on a nationwide recruiting tour to prove his mettle in the spring of 2022. He attended an Under Armour camp in Baltimore, and then did one camp circuit across Texas — making stops at Houston and SMU — as well as another camp circuit in the northeastern region of the United States.
One school in that northeastern region took a particular interest in international players. Under head coach Stan Drayton, the Temple Owls had significant European influence scattered across the facilities. Drayton’s 2022 roster at Temple included British offensive tackle James Faminu, Swedish offensive tackles Isaac Moore and Victor Stoffel, and German defensive tackle Joseph Appiah Darkwa.
After watching Clarke’s Twitter film and observing him at camps, Drayton and his staff decided to take a flier on another European prospect, and they offered the London native a scholarship.
“Temple was a school that went, ‘We see what this kid can be with the right coaching and right culture around him. Let’s bring him in and show him what it’s like to be a Temple Owl,’” Clarke said.
Clarke was still relatively new to the game of football compared to his teammates. Instead of making immediate impact on gamedays, he spent his first two seasons developing on the scout team, contributing on special teams, and playing occasional reps as a backup tight end. He only secured five receptions across 2023 and 2024, but following the 2024 campaign, the program saw a significant shift.
Head coach K.C. Keeler was hired to replace Drayton. Keeler didn’t initially thrust Clarke into a starting role upon arriving, rather, the tight end willed his way into it during fall camp. In the 2025 opener, it became clear that offseason work paid dividends. Clarke corralled four receptions for 84 yards and two touchdowns in Temple’s 42-10 rout of UMass.
“Coming out of spring, Peter wasn’t even our starting tight end,” Keeler said. “We had an early enrollee freshman in front of him. He’s the kind of kid that it doesn’t bother him. He wasn’t gonna make noise. It was more like motivation. And that first game against UMass, he goes out making play after play after play, and all of a sudden you realize, this guy’s a good football player. I don’t think he could do that without the right mentality. He’s become one of our leaders. He’s not afraid to hold people accountable.”
That opener at UMass wasn’t a one-off breakout game. It was the beginning of a trend. Clarke wound up amassing 30 receptions for 483 yards and six touchdowns in his junior season, earning a coveted spot on the All-American Conference Second Team.
All-conference recognition often comes with a difficult decision in today’s climate. 78 percent of First and Second Team All-American Conference selections transferred this offseason. But Clarke was an exception, wanting to reciprocate the loyalty Temple showed him during his unique recruitment — even if it was under a different coaching staff.
“Being a high school recruit that’s not from America, you can imagine what high school recruitment is like,” Clarke said. “A bunch of schools wanted to dip their feet in because other schools did first, and then pull away at the last minute. Temple was someone that believed in me, wanted to pour into me, understood who I was, where I came from, and what I could be. When it was time for me to shine and I did, I didn’t want to jump ship. I wanted to stay here, play, get Temple back on track to where I know it can be. I want to get this place back to the 2015 years that alums talk about forever. I just wanted to stay loyal to a program that was loyal to me.”
Keeler believes Clarke’s commitment to remaining in Philadelphia played a significant role in that retention, resonating across the rest of the roster.
“When he stayed, a lot of the guys decided to stay because they know the opportunities he had to leave,” Keeler said. “By him not leaving, it made us a stronger football team all around.”
Temple retained seven offensive starters this offseason and did not lose a single starter on either side of the ball to the transfer portal. With continuity as their strength, the Owls are set on bringing the glory days back to Philadelphia.
When Temple played in back-to-back American Conference title games in 2015 and 2016, Clarke was still an adolescent in London who never even played a snap of tackle football. Yet, he is incredibly well-versed in his Temple history. And his knowledge of the Owls’ NFL factory — which includes 30 players drafted in the 21st century — is one reason he believes he is at the right program to prepare him for the next step in his football progression.
“The most important thing about making it to the NFL is all about game reps and development year over year, and this is a place that you can do that,” Clarke said. “You see the Jordan Magees, the Tyler Matakeviches. You see these guys that come through and continuously develop and then have long NFL careers, so the blueprint was right there for me to follow.”
Clarke has one more season remaining at Temple before pursuing his NFL dream. And it all started with grainy highlight videos and a Twitter account.
