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AF_Puma | Saturday, January 20, 2007, 12:25 pm
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Transcribed by Jim Vallen
COUGARBLUE
John Beck has tackled high school and college football. Now his dream continues as he looks to a career in the National Football League (NFL).
Athletes are not born out of nothing, but are developed over time. Most of those that have been the most successful have started in their beloved sport at a young age and the fire inside them to be the best at whatever their pursuit was has driven them farther than all the others.
For BYU quarterback, John Beck, he has now been successful in football at the first two levels he has played—that being high school and now college.
At the high school level he succeeded in being among the best. Here’s what his personal bio states as posted by the BYU Athletic Department (www.byucougars.com):
“Earned Outstanding Male Scholar Athlete honors at Mountain View High School ... a three-year letter winner ... led Mountain View HS to a state championship as a senior ... posted an overall record of 25-2 over his junior and senior seasons ... earned first-team all-region, first-team all-state, USA Today All-American honorable mention and Dairyman first-team All-America honors ... named the region Offensive Player of the Year ... garnered first-team Super All-State and Super All-State Player-of-the-Year honors ... recognized as the Arizona High School Football Player of the Year ... earned both the Ed Dougherty and Fred Enke Awards (Arizona Quarterback of the Year) ... named the MVP during the state championship game as a senior ... selected as the Arizona All-Star game Most Valuable Player ... recognized by Fox Sports as the Arizona 5A Player of the Year ... holds the Arizona high school record with 42 touchdown completions in a single season with only 4 interceptions.”
Impressive! Step one done.
Funny thing was that even with a resume like that, he still didn’t receive a scholarship at BYU coming right out of high school. John Beck gray-shirted his first semester at BYU, which means he wasn’t under scholarship and he paid his own way. Still, the coaches saw enough of him with his positive outlook and strong work ethic as he interacted with the coaches and the players at BYU before departing for his LDS mission to Portugal in 2000 that they promised him a scholarship upon his return.
He had decided early in life that he wanted to be a quarterback at BYU and he wasn’t going to deviate from that dream until there was no chance remaining. A Salt Lake paper printed a picture in 2004 of John as a three-year-old with a BYU shirt and standing next to a poster of the BYU football team. Some three-year-olds don’t even know what football is, but John grew up growing to love and supporting the team of his parents. It became a regular family ritual to travel each December to San Diego to attend the BYU games in the Holiday Bowl.
Then came his career at BYU following his LDS mission where he was one of the few (if not maybe the only) quarterbacks ever in the program to spend four strait years without redshirting.
Success again? Yes.
The summary that the BYU athletic department has recently posted on their web site following the 2006 season takes 950 words just to summarize his career, not even getting into the years individually. His accomplishments were so extensive that altogether his bio page uses 2,019 words to describe his BYU football career.
One of the most significant accomplishments that sets him right beside the many great quarterbacks to have stood at the same helm at BYU at quarterback was that he finished his career at BYU as the Cougars' second all-time leading passer with 11,021 yards.
I ultimately believe that the fact that he is the first BYU quarterback to be an LDS returned missionary; to have guided his team to win the Mountain West Conference championship (8-0 conference record); to win the rivalry game with the University of Utah (33-31) and to win their bowl game (vs. the University of Oregon in the Las Vegas Bowl 38-8) will set him apart more so than any other accolade in the laurels of BYU football.
Impressive! Step two done.
Now his football dream is not complete. From his early years of childhood, where he received a Chicago Bears helmet and No. 9 jersey of then Chicago and ex-BYU great Jim McMahon for Christmas and then the following year dressing up with that shirt, helmet and complete ensemble with pads, the headband and the sunglasses for Halloween, he’s wanted to be a NFL quarterback.
I remember that feeling as I still have my uniform from about that same age and I remember wanting to be an NFL player. My dream didn’t get very far though.
His has.
Step three begins.
John Beck spoke this last week with KNZ's David James (DJ) and Patrick Kinahan (PK) about his preparation for the 2007 East-West Shrine game being played today in Houston, Texas (5 P.M. MST on ESPN2) and his upcoming participation in the NFL combine and the future of the BYU football team.
DJ and PK are on KNZ’s, The Manly Morning Show (6 A.M. to 10 A.M. weekday mornings on 1280 The Zone (1280 AM Salt Lake; 960 AM Utah County). Here is their interview:
1280: “Have you come down from the Vegas Bowl win yet or do you still just every once in awhile close your eyes and savor the moment?
JB: “You know, I think I’ve come down from it, but it still feels nice that we finished the season off the way that we planned on and the way we wanted to. I’m just working right now to try to make it to the next level.”
1280: “John, you talked about how you never could really celebrate because of there was always another game to be played. Now you obviously have the NFL career that you are preparing for, but you did finish off that season in great fashion. Did you actually personally do any celebration?”
JB: “Not really. I’m not a really big celebratory person. I just kind of like thought, ‘That was fun.’ That night I actually stayed up and watched the replay just to see some of the mistakes that happened in the game and see how I could have fixed them. I’m more of the type of guy to just move on to the next task.”
1280: “What is the next task?”
JB: “Right now it’s getting prepared for the NFL combine and this game down here at the East/West Shrine Game in Houston. We’ve finished our week of practice so the next task for me is to have a good game Saturday and continue my preparation for the combine.”
1280: “Did you see this comment in the Houston Chronicle that a writer [Lance Zierlein] had, ‘He's clearly the best QB at this game. He showed a great command of the passing game…He showed a very fast release and strong arm. When something wasn't there in 7 on 7 drills, he didn't force it. He has good feet and showed good accuracy on deep balls with plenty of air under the ball when throwing to taller receivers.’ So he’s really pumping you up. How do you feel about that? Do you feel your progression is where you need to be?”
JB: “I feel like I’ve had a good week of practice. The first day was a little different just because it was my first time of throwing passes to guys I wasn’t used to; new plays, everything. So it took a little time to get the timing down, but I felt the second and third days that the practice out here went pretty good. We have a lot of talented guys on our team. It’s been a good experience. I’ve learned a lot of what it’s going to be like when I go to the combine. It’s going to be another situation where I’m not going to be used to throwing to the guys and I’m going to have to adjust. I feel like this has been a good learning experience on how to do that.”
1280: “What are NFL people telling you that you have to work on to prove or that you have to be good at in order to maximize your value and make yourself as good as you can be?”
JB: “Most of the meetings I’ve had with the NFL teams, they haven’t really told me upfront that this is what they think. That ask me more what I think my strengths are and what do I feel my weaknesses are. Most of all they just want to talk to me and to get to know me as a person because they’ve already seen my film, they’ve already talked to other people about me and they say, ‘We want to hear it from the person.’ So they want to hear my story, my background. I think just because today there’s a lot of stuff going around and they really want to know what the people are like since they will be paying so much money for them.”
1280: “Do you have any feel, any ball park estimate about where you might go?”
JB: “You know what, I think it’s too early to tell. You know, so much can happen. One thing I have learned though that certain teams have preferences. You know, one team may like the big popping quarterback or one team they may like the slightly smaller, a little more mobile one. So it’s too hard to tell and I think even up to draft day there’s no way of knowing where you will fall just because it’s all dependent on the teams and what they prefer.”
1280: “You’ve got the combine, and I know that’s still a little ways out, but it’s kind of like the SAT for pro football players and it’s not just being good at the combine, but there’s tricks you can do, things you can study to improve you performance in key stuff. Have you started working on that?”
JB: “Definitely. My preparation for the combines started right after I got back from the Vegas Bowl. I moved out of my apartment there in Provo, and I’ve moved down to my parent’s home in Mesa and I’ve just been staying there with my wife and I’ve been training. My schedule is usually from 9 o’clock in the morning to 5 o’clock at night and that’s taken up my entire time until I came out here to start practice for the East-West Shrine game and when I go back down to Arizona I’ll just kind of resume that schedule of getting back into the swing of things. I’m already working on my standing broad jump, on my vertical jump and on all of the testing that's going to take place in the combines.”
1280: “Have you been coached or taught as to what necessarily you need to work on and what the pros want you to work on?”
JB: “No. They haven’t really ever come up and said, but because I’ve followed the NFL scouting stuff for such a long time and I’ve always been trying to improve my game, I think I kind of have a good idea, a good handle on what kind of things they are looking for in players. I’m always trying to improve in the things that I know they are looking for.”
1280: “You know, people hear the standing broad jump John and they have to be thinking, ‘What?’ and this is where I reference this as kind of an SAT test. Some people kind of struggle with the SAT test and some people who take tests well do better than they should. I feel the same way about the combine. I’m watching a playoff game and Philip Rivers [North Carolina State/San Diego Chargers] and Tom Brady [Michigan/New England Patriots] are making good plays and making mistakes and who cares about a standing broad jump? But I guess you have to take it seriously.”
JB: “Yea, you know I just think it’s kind of a businessman’s way of kind of getting numbers on athletes. You know that businesses work a lot with numbers so this is a way to get numbers on players. The fact still remains the same that you have to be able to play football. There are some guys that are going to be able to go out in the combine and they’re going to be able to do it extremely well because they’re good at things like the standing broad jump or the vertical jump and they’re going to have good testing numbers. But it still comes down to the game of football and I’ve been told time and time again by different people, ‘Hey you know, don’t look too much into the whole combine deal. It’s only a fraction of the things that are so important. You know, game film and what you do on Saturdays throughout you college career appears what’s going to matter most.’
A lot of times for the quarterback position at combines they have you run the forty just because they want to see and make sure this guy isn’t as slow as molasses. Or they want to do these other tests to see if someone is an athlete. They could care less between a 4.5 and a 4.6 in a forty. That doesn’t really matter. Now maybe for some other positions it does, but for the quarterback position, I’ve just been told, ‘Hey, don’t look too much into it. You don’t have to test out. Don’t worry about testing.’ One of the guys that tested the worse in years was Tom Brady [he was only a 6th round draft choice in the year he came out into the NFL] and now look at him. He’s a Super Bowl champion, a Pro-Bowler—the guys amazing.”
1280: “During the season a lot was made of the talk with Robbie Bosco and shortly after that you had the win against TCU and then you had the sprint to the finish and the winning streak. You can draw on the former BYU players in your BYU days, but have you talked to former Cougars who, either quarterbacks or other positions, were in the NFL about the NFL, about preparing for the NFL?”
JB: “I saw Giff [former BYU quarterback Gifford Nielsen who is the Sports Director at WHOU-TV in Houston, Texas] the first day I was down here. He came out to practice and he and I got a chance to talk a little bit afterwards. Giffer has been great to me. If I want to talk he told me to call him at any time. Steve Young the same way. Those guys have been extremely nice to me in allowing myself to ask them questions because it’s something that each of them have been through.”
1280: “What have you learned from them?”
JB: “A lot of it has been, ‘Hey, just worry about the game of football. You know a lot of these people are going to worry about what you said. Worry about testing and all of that kind of stuff, but just be yourself and just worry about the game of football.' One other thing about me is that I love the game of football so much. I’m always trying to be my best at it. They’ve told me to let teams know that; that teams want to see that. They want to know how much you care about the game of football.”
1280: “You were gone last Tuesday as you were down there in Houston. They [BYU] gave the trophies to the players at the halftime of the basketball game [vs. Wyoming at the Marriott Center] and Bronco Mendenhall spoke. He said, ‘The best is yet to come.’ From your experience, what would you say to that and how will that happen and why will that happen?”
JB: “Well the thing that I found was that as a program tries to continue in the right direction, it’s not just going to be one year and that’s the thing that going to get things going. It’s been a good start, but that needs to be followed by several years of hard work; a number of years of doing things right, and the great thing about BYU right now is that they have Coach Mendenhall at the helm, someone who is constantly working on that. You have to have someone with a vision and that’s something that Coach Mendenhall does have. He has a vision for the program. He knows exactly what he wants these kids to accomplish and he’s going to hold them to that standard. So now as we’ve kind of moved up that bar, this last season we had a good year at 11-2. Those guys can now take it a step ahead. Let’s take it from the 2006 season and move it into the 2007 season. Let’s find a way to get better. I think that Coach Mendenhall, because he knows so well what he wants to accomplish that he’s going to be able to lay it out for the players and say, ‘If you do this, this is what we can accomplish.’ You know, all the players at BYU are now fired up. I have a brother-in-law on the team and so I can still hear what’s going on with the team and it sounds like right now there is a lot of excitement around the program because of the success of the last year and what they feel like they can accomplish. So I think with the vision that Coach Mendenhall has and the excitement of the players, I think things will continue to improve for them.”
1280: “Your brother-in-law is linebacker Markell Staffieri [6-3, 232 lb soon to be senior LB]. What do you think about the quarterback position? What have you seen that would provide fans with encouragement as far as next year?”
JB: “I’ve never seen the guy that transferred from Snow College [Cade Cooper] and there’s another JC guy [Glendale Community College transfer Brenden Gaskins] that transferred from Arizona. I’ve never seen them play, but I have seen Max [Hall] play and I know Max is a good quarterback. He’s a very competitive person and I’m hearing that the other guys, you know they wouldn’t be at BYU if they weren’t accomplished players. So I think what it’s going to do is it’s going to create competition. Any time there’s competition it makes you better. So I think with the competition going on at the quarterback position, all three of those guys are going to be finding ways to be their best and any time you have the guy at the helm, the quarterback, trying to be his best day in and day out, it’s going to be a help to the offense and it’s going to be a help for the entire football team.”
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