It took polling NFL scouts, tracking pro day workouts, watching tape and getting into a GM's mindset. But kalynkahler zeroed in on a player she believes is the draft's best-kept secret. For now, he is 'Prospect X.' Any guesses?
Prospect X sits down at the upscale Italian restaurant. There’s no seating chart for this dinner, and he doesn’t know anybody that he’s eating with in this group of seven, so he takes the first available chair to avoid the awkward dance. He’s dressed nicely for the occasion: khaki jacket, jeans and a polo tucked into his belt. Tomorrow at the facility, he’ll wear khaki pants and one of only two button-down shirts he owns.An employee for the team sits down next to X.
X is meeting so many new scouts and assistant GMs he can’t keep their names straight. Until this year, X had an iPhone SE that was so old it still had the home button, and the vintage feature was barely functioning anymore. X didn’t care because he thinks technology is the “worst thing ever,” to the point that he refers to a cellphone as a “telephone.”
X went to the smallest high school division in his home state. His parents thought he was too small to play tackle football in elementary school, so in fourth grade he told a friend’s mom that his mom was totally fine with him playing football, then snuck off with her to secretly sign up for the team.He played both ways in high school and was the team’s kicker for three seasons. In his final high school game, he played 160 of 163 plays.
It wasn’t until the summer before his senior year that X started going to football camps. One camp had a fastest man competition, where “I blew the other two guys out of the water,” X says. That was the first time he ran a 4.4, and he finally caught the attention of one small football program. Despite that, X doesn’t show up often on lists of prospects or seven-round mock drafts. Another player who shares his last name is written up much more often.
Some scouts agreed with his OC’s opinion and said if X had played for a bigger school, he’d be graded a lot higher in this class. His coordinator was “scared to death” X would transfer up before this past season after getting calls from SEC schools. But X stayed put because he was happy on this small campus near the ocean and believed his coaches would get him NFL-ready.
He traveled to a warm-weather team close to the ocean, a team with scenery and weather patterns he wasn’t used to, and a midwestern team in a city not known for being a very sought-after place to live. Of the three spots, X described the least popular destination as his favorite. X hated how many people were in the city by the ocean, but he thought the midwestern town was “beautiful.”
X said he spent five hours at a hospital on one of his visits getting scans and X-rays on multiple parts of his body, emerging just in time to grab dinner with some of the coaches. His athletic trainer gives him almost daily updates about which teams have requested his medical records.
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