The Bills handed out blue mesh shorts to their players in spring 2001. When Tim Hasselbeck got to his locker, though, all he found were gray cotton ones.
As an undrafted free agent rookie quarterback from Boston College, Hasselbeck already worried the team thought he didn’t belong. Now he didn’t even match his teammates.
“I was so embarrassed by it, I found a local sporting goods store and bought a pair of blue mesh shorts,” Hasselbeck, an ESPN analyst, said. “They weren’t an exact match, but I’m like … ‘I can’t go out in grays while everyone else is in the real stuff.’”
Being undrafted gives players an impostor syndrome that never goes away. It’s not paranoia, either — general managers and coaches are more incentivized to have their draft picks succeed.
“It’s a scarlet letter, I guess,” he said.
That’s why Hasselbeck roots for Tyson Bagent, the Bears’ undrafted rookie quarterback from Div. II Shepherd University who will make his second career start Sunday night against the Chargers. Most undrafted rookies never get the opportunity Bagent earned, much less look as comfortable as he did in the Bears’ 30-12 win against the Raiders.
“He was showing his true self as a player,” Hasselbeck said.
The scarlet letter has its benefits.
“When you’re coming from the situation where you’re an undrafted free agent, you probably don’t have a physical ability that wows people every day. …” said former Cowboys head coach Jason Garrett, an NBC analyst. “I always felt like that was your edge: you had to perform, you had to stay locked in, you couldn’t take anything for granted.”
Garrett himself was once an undrafted free agent quarterback from Princeton. He the Saints’ practice squad quarterback for a year before playing in the World League of American Football and the CFL, eventually carving out a decade-long career as an NFL backup. As the Cowboys head coach from 2010-19, he was instrumental in the career of Tony Romo, an undrafted quarterback from FCS Eastern Illinois.
“When you’re an undrafted free agent there isn’t that investment in you,” Garrett said. “There isn’t this feeling that this guy is going to continue to get chance after chance. You have to make the most of your opportunity every day.”
Bagent was so locked in during the offseason program and training camp that he climbed from fourth-stringer to backup to Justin Fields. While his humble roots will certainly be the focus of a “Sunday Night Football” segment — the son of Travis “The Beast” Bagent, the world’s greatest left-handed arm wrestler, was a zero-star recruit who went to college 10 miles from his high school — his time-on-task at Shepherd shouldn’t be ignored. He threw 2,040 college passes, about three-and-a-half times what Fields did. Coach Matt Eberflus joked earlier this week that it was the “7,000 passes he’s thrown in his life” that gave Bagent a good sense of when to get rid of the ball.
“You see a player that belongs, that’s good enough to play quarterback in the NFL … ” said Chargers coach Brandon Staley, who played quarterback at FCS Dayton and Div. II Mercyhurst. “He had a tremendous college career. …
“There’s that old saying that, if you’re good enough, the NFL will find you.”
Transitioning from taking every snap in college to being the fourth-stringer is a challenge in itself, offensive coordinator Luke Getsy said. He lived it in 2007, when he went from being a two-year starter at Akron to the 49ers’ fourth quarterback in training camp.
“That part of it was unique for me,” said Getsy, who wore a 49ers uniform around the house as a kid because Joe Montana grew up near his hometown in suburban Pittsburgh. “It’s difficult ... Compare it to Tyson, who plays, has every rep, throws for all those yards. And now you come in and now you’re the fourth guy.
“You have to take advantage of the opportunities when you get ’em.”
That opportunity in itself is worth celebrating for those who were once undrafted quarterbacks. Hasselbeck — and his bootleg team shorts — was released by the Bills over the phone before training camp even started. He landed with the Ravens, where he was cut again — this time on national television during the first season of “Hard Knocks.”
That’s life for an undrafted quarterback.
“The leash on someone that’s drafted high is longer, plain and simple,” Hasselbeck said. “Just about everybody hits some kind of adversity. Unless you’re in a situation where you’re like, ‘We’re married, there’s no divorcing,’ you don’t keep getting chances.”
His advice for Bagent: enjoy it.
“You didn’t know in August if you were going to make a football team …” he said. “And you just put a stake in the ground to show people, ‘I can play at this level.’”
His next chance to prove that comes Sunday.
“The great thing about the NFL is you have to go do it this week,” Garrett said. “And then you have to go do it next week.”
