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I thought this was a decent read. I didn't see it posted already.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/sport...ch-ashland-bears-spt-0504-20170503-story.html
Bears Q&A: Adam Shaheen's ascent from 'Stork' to 'Baby Gronk'
Bears general manager Ryan Pace wants it known: Adam Shaheen is not a project. The second-round pick out of Division II Ashland University may still be a bit a raw. And Shaheen may face a steep learning curve initially in learning how to play tight end in the NFL. But Pace insisted over the weekend that he sees Shaheen having an impact as a rookie in 2017.
"We're excited about what he can add to our team right now," Pace said.
The Bears fell in love with Shaheen's rare combination of size and athleticism during the pre-draft process. The massive tight end is 6-foot-6 and 278 pounds. Yet last season at Ashland, he set a Division II single-season record for touchdown catches by a tight end with 16. He also totaled 57 grabs for 867 yards and put together a film compilation that wowed the Bears' talent evaluation staff.
Shaheen's background as a college basketball player — he played one season at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown — also proved appealing.
Said Pace: "When you're watching tape, you have to keep looking down and go, 'Man, this guy's 6-6 1/2 and 278 pounds and he moves like that?' He has good route quickness, ability to separate. Natural hands, good body control, big catching radius."
The Tribune recently reached out to Ashland tight ends coach Reggie Gamble for insight on Shaheen. Here are the highlights from that Q&A:
When you first got Adam in the program in 2014, what were your first impressions?
Early on when I met him you could tell he was intense. And that he was an intent learner. From our very first conversation, I could tell he was all business. … But he only weighed 215 pounds when I first met him. He just looked like a beanpole. I just told him, "Hey, man, come in and work. You're going to have two seniors in front of you. But this is an opportunity for you to come in and hit the weight room and gain some weight and learn." And he bought into that.
He was our No. 3 tight end that first year and he just bought into everything we said. Now you see the results. It is what it is now. He's a second-round draft pick in the NFL.
Adam told us that he graduated high school at 6-foot-4 and 195 pounds. You look at him now and he's 6-6, 278. How do you even begin to explain that growth?
I've never seen anything like it. He obviously went the basketball route first because he got tall first. But man, the amount of food the kid would eat was astounding. I'd go in the cafeteria and you'd sit down and Adam would have four or five plates in front of him. To the average person, you're watching him eat all this and it's like, "Hey, man, how are you not throwing up right now?"
But he'd do that and then he'd go workout and he'd roll over to Chipotle later that night and pack more in. The amount of calories he was putting in was crazy. But it was never dessert or beer or anything bad. He was very dedicated to taking care of his body. So he'd be putting in 12,000 calories a day of just good, healthy food.
Ryan Pace, the Bears general manager, said that when he's considering a Division II player, the thing he looks for is obvious dominance. What made Adam dominant for you guys?
It was just the unusual combination of size and agility and his ability to catch the ball the way that he does. That added with his intelligence is a big deal. When you turn on his film, you see him in literally every spot on the offense except for quarterback or tailback. He's attached, detached, in the slot, out wide. That's why he's unique. He can do all those things. We can put him into any situation to make sure that he's getting an ideal matchup to get the ball and to help us. … There are kids that only come along every so often where coaches will have this answer: Who's your best player? Your smartest player? Your most unselfish player? That's Adam.
Do you have any signature moments or highlights of his that you're never going to forget?
We're at Northern Michigan (in 2015) and we're down five with about 2 minutes left and Adam takes off. It was like second-and-23. We run a sprint-out throwback to him. He comes back across, catches the pass. And he pirouettes around the ref and then he goes and hurdles another kid. He does all this and then dives (to complete a 21-yard gain). And it's like, 'Oh, shoot!' Then later in that drive he catches the winning touchdown with 7 seconds left. And he wasn't open then either. He just jumped over the top of somebody and took the ball away. Those moments, man, are impressive.
He has been given the nickname "Baby Gronk" by some. That's pretty high praise. Can it be justified?
That's what he became, man. When he first got here — and he's probably not going to enjoy me sharing this — but they called him "Stork." He was just this tall, lanky all-arms-and-legs kid. So they nicknamed him "Stork" for his first year and a half. He told me, once I get to 260 (pounds), no one's allowed to call me "Stork" anymore. So that was one of the impetuses for him to gain that weight, to lose that nickname. So "Baby Gronk" has been a welcome change for him.
At the combine, Adam revealed that a good chunk of his weight gain could be attributed to those nonstop visits to Chipotle. How did that become a thing of legend?
I'm from Mansfield, where the nearest Chipotle was. And he'd drive the 15 to 20 minutes there probably three or four times a week. He became a Chipotle loyalty card holder. And this past semester alone, he and another tight end, Jack Holl, racked up like three 10-person Chipotle meals from all their trips there.
Another thing Ryan Pace emphasized after drafting Adam was how impressive his route quickness was at his size. What have you seen there?
It's unique in that he can do things that a guy at our level is normally doing at 5-foot-10 and 190 pounds. That forces defenses to adjust. It's a dilemma. How do you play him? Do they roll everything towards him and leave some of the other guys who are pretty talented with the weak side of the field to throw the ball all over? Or do you try to man him up one-on-one?
We've seen defenses move safeties out there, move linebackers out there and try to cover him. We've seen double and triple coverage. And somehow he's beaten all of it.
It's just unique. It makes our receivers work harder because they're seeing a guy who's 270 pounds take more reps than them at receiver and he's running around and not getting tired and he's still showing great explosion. It's so unusual to have that size and speed and to have the agility he has. But when you watch a lot of his catches, the body control he displays is unbelievable. That just shows you how much work he's put in the weight room and on the field.
How do you notice his basketball background standing out?
It's his soft hands and body control in the air. And really it's being able to track a ball down. Being a basketball player, that's probably the biggest thing; you're always locating the ball, obviously. So that combined with his body control when he's running his routes and going up in the air to get the ball is impressive. Sometimes he's doing 360s just to find the ball and then coming down with the catch and then tapping his toes inbounds. That's where you see his basketball ability come into play the most. And when he's in the open field, he has really good vision. You put on the film from the last two years and he may slip here or there. But he's just coming into his own with his size, which is scary. He's just now understanding how to really use it all.
Adam joked that they don't ever call pass interference at the D2 level, that he had to produce with defenders hanging all over him a lot of the time. What did you see on that front?
Man, I'll tell you what. We've likened it to the Shaq theory. And we just say, "Hey, man, you're bigger than everybody else so you're not always going to get the calls that everyone else gets." We get into things. Like, "Hey ref, this is what's going to happen. He's a tough kid. But let's not let them pull him down by the neck." Certain things like that. Let's make this fair. Because there are times he gets called for pushing off when really he's just getting a defender's hands off of him. So when he pushes back off, that guy's going to fly 5 yards because Adam's arms are 6 feet long.
It made him a better player. Honestly. Once he got to a point where he realized this is the way you're going to be played because you're not sneaking up on anybody anymore. So the emphasis came to us as a staff to be able to move him around and put him in the right positions to be able to stop that, so that defenses weren't able to hold him at the line of scrimmage and so forth.
There's obviously going to be an enormous jump from the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference to the NFC North. Realistically, what do you see as the biggest hurdles for Adam in the immediate future?
It'll be technique and adjusting to the speed of it. Adam has the ability to play at that level. Obviously. But it's about how fast he's going to adjust to the speed. Obviously he needs to refine his run blocking technique. And focusing at the top of his routes. It's all things he has worked on. He's gotten better. And I'm sure once those guys get him there in camp and OTAs and so forth, it's going to come to fruition.
Not long ago, you were describing him as a beanpole and a guy whose college athletic career started as a basketball player at University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown. Now he's a second-round pick with the Chicago Bears. How do you process that rapid and unlikely rise?
I haven't got that far yet. But it's cool. It's an awesome message to the guys here now and the future recruits as we head out now on the road recruiting soon. This helps sell that message that you can reach great heights at this place. He's a prime example of a guy who came here with a goal and then set a plan and followed it. That's it. You make of yourself what you want to. That becomes a great message for our program, our kids and our athletic department as a whole.
But there's no way you could have envisioned this, right?
Oh, heck, no. … But when a kid comes in and says, "This is what I want to do and this is what I think I can do," then it's my job to do everything in my power to put him in the positions to do that. That's fun. Because everybody has a mentee who they hear say, "This is what I want to do." And to have somebody who's serious and is really intent on going after that and then they accomplish that? It's special.
When did that become realistic for you, the idea that he could be an NFL draft pick?
Last year. At the end of the 2015 season, I realized this kid had a year of actual playing experience and he led the country in catches (among tight ends). And his body was nowhere near filled out yet. He was 255 pounds and, not thin, but didn't look the beefy part like he does now. And when he came back 270 and could still run, I'm thinking, "Is he going to leave this year or next year?" That's it. We had a good talk after the season about what he was going to do. And there was no pressure from our end. So what's best for you?
But my biggest thing was to make sure he gathered as much information as he could before he made a decision. And he did that. He's a smart kid. He's still in school now and is going to graduate. And all the things lined up. His name was hot as can be right now. And he took the chance. And it worked out for him.
It's pretty rare to have an early entrant into the draft from the GLIAC. That had to be sort of a surreal discussion early on when he was talking about chasing his NFL dream, right?
That's what it was. We don't have these conversations here, man. Not at Division II. Normally it's a fifth-year senior figuring out his NFL hopes. This was one of those, "OK, this is what you think is possible." And hey, if you can make the improvement from Year 2 to Year 3 that you made from Year 1 to Year 2, it's a legit possibility. And I agreed with him. OK, we're on the same page. We're in the same boat. We can make this work.
And he had another great year. So there was really nothing left for him to prove here. And I know people say he has plenty of room for improvement. Could he become a better blocker? Yeah. Can he refine his route running? Yeah. But can he do those things and have an impact and play greater competition and get coached up by some of the best coaches in the world up there? Yeah. So this works out for him. And the payday doesn't hurt.
What can you say about his personality?
He's a kid who is going to buy into the city. He's a quiet, reserved kid. But he's opinionated. Overall, he's a good guy. Very humble. There's never been any ego from him, from the time he was a third-teamer, non-starter and didn't play until all this happened. And when I saw him this past week, he's been the same exact kid the entire way through. He's very consistent and humble. He's a worker. Blue collar and unassuming. I will say that he probably needs to go shopping. That's one thing. I think he can afford some longer pants now. Every year, he's had the same sweat pants. I'm like, "Man, I don't know how much longer those sweats are going to last, buddy."
The Bears and the city of Chicago are getting an awesome young man. He plays video games and hangs out with his buddies in his down time. That's his leisure.
You mentioned opinionated. There were some semi-controversial things he posted to social media during his younger days that drew some attention recently. How do you reconcile some of that?
I tell these guys they're grown. They're 18, 19, 20, 21 years old. Since Adam has been here, he's calmed a lot of it down. He has very little social media presence. Since he's been here, it hasn't been a distraction to him at all. And I don't see that changing any time soon.
He is who he is and he has his beliefs. But he doesn't push those on anyone. And he's an open listener. He's a great person to debate with. He has his views and he finds facts to back up his views. But it's one of those things. I teach these kids to think for themselves but respect everyone's opinion. He does that.
Some of these social media posts, obviously, are four or five years old. But the tone and the stances in some of them have rubbed some people the wrong way. What do you make of that?
Twitter, man. ... I have no idea what I would have put on that thing (when I was younger). I have a nephew now who's 15 and we just had that talk two weeks ago. It's their whole world now. It's like, "Hey, man, perception is reality. So understand what you're creating. You control that." I think Adam gets that. He has some solid people around him, from his dad to us. And his agent is doing a solid job with him. And his friends are the same people who were there with him when he was 210 pounds and nobody in the world knew him. He hasn't let the hype suck him into anything. He's a good kid.
dwiederer@chicagotribune.com
http://www.chicagotribune.com/sport...ch-ashland-bears-spt-0504-20170503-story.html
Bears Q&A: Adam Shaheen's ascent from 'Stork' to 'Baby Gronk'
Bears general manager Ryan Pace wants it known: Adam Shaheen is not a project. The second-round pick out of Division II Ashland University may still be a bit a raw. And Shaheen may face a steep learning curve initially in learning how to play tight end in the NFL. But Pace insisted over the weekend that he sees Shaheen having an impact as a rookie in 2017.
"We're excited about what he can add to our team right now," Pace said.
The Bears fell in love with Shaheen's rare combination of size and athleticism during the pre-draft process. The massive tight end is 6-foot-6 and 278 pounds. Yet last season at Ashland, he set a Division II single-season record for touchdown catches by a tight end with 16. He also totaled 57 grabs for 867 yards and put together a film compilation that wowed the Bears' talent evaluation staff.
Shaheen's background as a college basketball player — he played one season at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown — also proved appealing.
Said Pace: "When you're watching tape, you have to keep looking down and go, 'Man, this guy's 6-6 1/2 and 278 pounds and he moves like that?' He has good route quickness, ability to separate. Natural hands, good body control, big catching radius."
The Tribune recently reached out to Ashland tight ends coach Reggie Gamble for insight on Shaheen. Here are the highlights from that Q&A:
When you first got Adam in the program in 2014, what were your first impressions?
Early on when I met him you could tell he was intense. And that he was an intent learner. From our very first conversation, I could tell he was all business. … But he only weighed 215 pounds when I first met him. He just looked like a beanpole. I just told him, "Hey, man, come in and work. You're going to have two seniors in front of you. But this is an opportunity for you to come in and hit the weight room and gain some weight and learn." And he bought into that.
He was our No. 3 tight end that first year and he just bought into everything we said. Now you see the results. It is what it is now. He's a second-round draft pick in the NFL.
Adam told us that he graduated high school at 6-foot-4 and 195 pounds. You look at him now and he's 6-6, 278. How do you even begin to explain that growth?
I've never seen anything like it. He obviously went the basketball route first because he got tall first. But man, the amount of food the kid would eat was astounding. I'd go in the cafeteria and you'd sit down and Adam would have four or five plates in front of him. To the average person, you're watching him eat all this and it's like, "Hey, man, how are you not throwing up right now?"
But he'd do that and then he'd go workout and he'd roll over to Chipotle later that night and pack more in. The amount of calories he was putting in was crazy. But it was never dessert or beer or anything bad. He was very dedicated to taking care of his body. So he'd be putting in 12,000 calories a day of just good, healthy food.
Ryan Pace, the Bears general manager, said that when he's considering a Division II player, the thing he looks for is obvious dominance. What made Adam dominant for you guys?
It was just the unusual combination of size and agility and his ability to catch the ball the way that he does. That added with his intelligence is a big deal. When you turn on his film, you see him in literally every spot on the offense except for quarterback or tailback. He's attached, detached, in the slot, out wide. That's why he's unique. He can do all those things. We can put him into any situation to make sure that he's getting an ideal matchup to get the ball and to help us. … There are kids that only come along every so often where coaches will have this answer: Who's your best player? Your smartest player? Your most unselfish player? That's Adam.
Do you have any signature moments or highlights of his that you're never going to forget?
We're at Northern Michigan (in 2015) and we're down five with about 2 minutes left and Adam takes off. It was like second-and-23. We run a sprint-out throwback to him. He comes back across, catches the pass. And he pirouettes around the ref and then he goes and hurdles another kid. He does all this and then dives (to complete a 21-yard gain). And it's like, 'Oh, shoot!' Then later in that drive he catches the winning touchdown with 7 seconds left. And he wasn't open then either. He just jumped over the top of somebody and took the ball away. Those moments, man, are impressive.
He has been given the nickname "Baby Gronk" by some. That's pretty high praise. Can it be justified?
That's what he became, man. When he first got here — and he's probably not going to enjoy me sharing this — but they called him "Stork." He was just this tall, lanky all-arms-and-legs kid. So they nicknamed him "Stork" for his first year and a half. He told me, once I get to 260 (pounds), no one's allowed to call me "Stork" anymore. So that was one of the impetuses for him to gain that weight, to lose that nickname. So "Baby Gronk" has been a welcome change for him.
At the combine, Adam revealed that a good chunk of his weight gain could be attributed to those nonstop visits to Chipotle. How did that become a thing of legend?
I'm from Mansfield, where the nearest Chipotle was. And he'd drive the 15 to 20 minutes there probably three or four times a week. He became a Chipotle loyalty card holder. And this past semester alone, he and another tight end, Jack Holl, racked up like three 10-person Chipotle meals from all their trips there.
Another thing Ryan Pace emphasized after drafting Adam was how impressive his route quickness was at his size. What have you seen there?
It's unique in that he can do things that a guy at our level is normally doing at 5-foot-10 and 190 pounds. That forces defenses to adjust. It's a dilemma. How do you play him? Do they roll everything towards him and leave some of the other guys who are pretty talented with the weak side of the field to throw the ball all over? Or do you try to man him up one-on-one?
We've seen defenses move safeties out there, move linebackers out there and try to cover him. We've seen double and triple coverage. And somehow he's beaten all of it.
It's just unique. It makes our receivers work harder because they're seeing a guy who's 270 pounds take more reps than them at receiver and he's running around and not getting tired and he's still showing great explosion. It's so unusual to have that size and speed and to have the agility he has. But when you watch a lot of his catches, the body control he displays is unbelievable. That just shows you how much work he's put in the weight room and on the field.
How do you notice his basketball background standing out?
It's his soft hands and body control in the air. And really it's being able to track a ball down. Being a basketball player, that's probably the biggest thing; you're always locating the ball, obviously. So that combined with his body control when he's running his routes and going up in the air to get the ball is impressive. Sometimes he's doing 360s just to find the ball and then coming down with the catch and then tapping his toes inbounds. That's where you see his basketball ability come into play the most. And when he's in the open field, he has really good vision. You put on the film from the last two years and he may slip here or there. But he's just coming into his own with his size, which is scary. He's just now understanding how to really use it all.
Adam joked that they don't ever call pass interference at the D2 level, that he had to produce with defenders hanging all over him a lot of the time. What did you see on that front?
Man, I'll tell you what. We've likened it to the Shaq theory. And we just say, "Hey, man, you're bigger than everybody else so you're not always going to get the calls that everyone else gets." We get into things. Like, "Hey ref, this is what's going to happen. He's a tough kid. But let's not let them pull him down by the neck." Certain things like that. Let's make this fair. Because there are times he gets called for pushing off when really he's just getting a defender's hands off of him. So when he pushes back off, that guy's going to fly 5 yards because Adam's arms are 6 feet long.
It made him a better player. Honestly. Once he got to a point where he realized this is the way you're going to be played because you're not sneaking up on anybody anymore. So the emphasis came to us as a staff to be able to move him around and put him in the right positions to be able to stop that, so that defenses weren't able to hold him at the line of scrimmage and so forth.
There's obviously going to be an enormous jump from the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference to the NFC North. Realistically, what do you see as the biggest hurdles for Adam in the immediate future?
It'll be technique and adjusting to the speed of it. Adam has the ability to play at that level. Obviously. But it's about how fast he's going to adjust to the speed. Obviously he needs to refine his run blocking technique. And focusing at the top of his routes. It's all things he has worked on. He's gotten better. And I'm sure once those guys get him there in camp and OTAs and so forth, it's going to come to fruition.
Not long ago, you were describing him as a beanpole and a guy whose college athletic career started as a basketball player at University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown. Now he's a second-round pick with the Chicago Bears. How do you process that rapid and unlikely rise?
I haven't got that far yet. But it's cool. It's an awesome message to the guys here now and the future recruits as we head out now on the road recruiting soon. This helps sell that message that you can reach great heights at this place. He's a prime example of a guy who came here with a goal and then set a plan and followed it. That's it. You make of yourself what you want to. That becomes a great message for our program, our kids and our athletic department as a whole.
But there's no way you could have envisioned this, right?
Oh, heck, no. … But when a kid comes in and says, "This is what I want to do and this is what I think I can do," then it's my job to do everything in my power to put him in the positions to do that. That's fun. Because everybody has a mentee who they hear say, "This is what I want to do." And to have somebody who's serious and is really intent on going after that and then they accomplish that? It's special.
When did that become realistic for you, the idea that he could be an NFL draft pick?
Last year. At the end of the 2015 season, I realized this kid had a year of actual playing experience and he led the country in catches (among tight ends). And his body was nowhere near filled out yet. He was 255 pounds and, not thin, but didn't look the beefy part like he does now. And when he came back 270 and could still run, I'm thinking, "Is he going to leave this year or next year?" That's it. We had a good talk after the season about what he was going to do. And there was no pressure from our end. So what's best for you?
But my biggest thing was to make sure he gathered as much information as he could before he made a decision. And he did that. He's a smart kid. He's still in school now and is going to graduate. And all the things lined up. His name was hot as can be right now. And he took the chance. And it worked out for him.
It's pretty rare to have an early entrant into the draft from the GLIAC. That had to be sort of a surreal discussion early on when he was talking about chasing his NFL dream, right?
That's what it was. We don't have these conversations here, man. Not at Division II. Normally it's a fifth-year senior figuring out his NFL hopes. This was one of those, "OK, this is what you think is possible." And hey, if you can make the improvement from Year 2 to Year 3 that you made from Year 1 to Year 2, it's a legit possibility. And I agreed with him. OK, we're on the same page. We're in the same boat. We can make this work.
And he had another great year. So there was really nothing left for him to prove here. And I know people say he has plenty of room for improvement. Could he become a better blocker? Yeah. Can he refine his route running? Yeah. But can he do those things and have an impact and play greater competition and get coached up by some of the best coaches in the world up there? Yeah. So this works out for him. And the payday doesn't hurt.
What can you say about his personality?
He's a kid who is going to buy into the city. He's a quiet, reserved kid. But he's opinionated. Overall, he's a good guy. Very humble. There's never been any ego from him, from the time he was a third-teamer, non-starter and didn't play until all this happened. And when I saw him this past week, he's been the same exact kid the entire way through. He's very consistent and humble. He's a worker. Blue collar and unassuming. I will say that he probably needs to go shopping. That's one thing. I think he can afford some longer pants now. Every year, he's had the same sweat pants. I'm like, "Man, I don't know how much longer those sweats are going to last, buddy."
The Bears and the city of Chicago are getting an awesome young man. He plays video games and hangs out with his buddies in his down time. That's his leisure.
You mentioned opinionated. There were some semi-controversial things he posted to social media during his younger days that drew some attention recently. How do you reconcile some of that?
I tell these guys they're grown. They're 18, 19, 20, 21 years old. Since Adam has been here, he's calmed a lot of it down. He has very little social media presence. Since he's been here, it hasn't been a distraction to him at all. And I don't see that changing any time soon.
He is who he is and he has his beliefs. But he doesn't push those on anyone. And he's an open listener. He's a great person to debate with. He has his views and he finds facts to back up his views. But it's one of those things. I teach these kids to think for themselves but respect everyone's opinion. He does that.
Some of these social media posts, obviously, are four or five years old. But the tone and the stances in some of them have rubbed some people the wrong way. What do you make of that?
Twitter, man. ... I have no idea what I would have put on that thing (when I was younger). I have a nephew now who's 15 and we just had that talk two weeks ago. It's their whole world now. It's like, "Hey, man, perception is reality. So understand what you're creating. You control that." I think Adam gets that. He has some solid people around him, from his dad to us. And his agent is doing a solid job with him. And his friends are the same people who were there with him when he was 210 pounds and nobody in the world knew him. He hasn't let the hype suck him into anything. He's a good kid.
dwiederer@chicagotribune.com
