According to Indianapolis Colts head coach Chuck Pagano, this year’s group of rookies, young players, and even a few “veterans” is a truly special group that has been working together at the team’s 3-day rookie mini-camp.
Of course, there are the Colts eight draft choices, the 15 undrafted free agents, and even try-out players, but each one of these players has a special story that has yet to be fully written. Pagano spoke on the matter during his Day 2: Press Conference today:
"“All of these guys have been through something,” Pagano said. “Gotten here with different paths and different roads. Shoot, we’ve got a long-snapper that’s 32 years old in camp [Chad Rempel]. So, we should be talking about our long-snapper too, but unique. I mean these guys, they all have a dream. It started a long time ago, when they were kids. About, hopefully, one day playing in the National Football League.”“Credit a guy like ‘Sif’ [Jean Sifrin], and credit a guy like the long-snapper, you know they stuck to it,” added Pagano. “They’ve been at different places and the journey has been very, very long and now they’re here. It doesn’t guarantee anything. It doesn’t mean you’re going to stick, but they’ve done enough to get themselves in an NFL building and get a try-out, so it’s special.”"
Some roads have been likely tougher than others, but each one of these players this weekend has displayed their own personal perseverance. It speaks dividends to their character and work ethic that they’re even getting the opportunity to attempt to live out their professional football dream with an NFL team like the Colts.
Per Pagano, many of these players were told “they couldn’t”, but with a lot of motivation and hard work were able to successfully prove their critics wrong:
"“And a lot of it is too, that there’s probably a lot of people that said, that told them their whole life, that they probably couldn’t, and so there’s always the motivation of having that chip on their shoulder of ‘No way, you can’t, you can’t, you can’t..’. Well, these guys are wired the right way,” added Pagano."
Last year, we saw undrafted free agents like defensive lineman Zach Kerr and safety Dewey McDonald make the team and become their own personal success stories. It’ll be interesting to see who out of this group will follow in their footsteps by blazing their own way onto the Colts 53-man roster. There’s definitely a lot of players out of this year’s group that are well-worth rooting for, that’s for sure.
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