Kellen Clemens will likely be riding a horse rather than the couch once the NFL Draft begins Saturday. Clemens, who will spend this weekend at home with family and friends in Burns, said he plans on relaxing during the selection show that will determine his career path.
He won’t be glued to the television, and he won’t contemplate the team that will draft him. Instead, Clemens will casually flip to ESPN to check the progress and await a phone call from one of 32 NFL general
managers who will deliver the message “We want you to compete with us.”
That is all Clemens is interested in – an opportunity to compete. It doesn’t have to be for a starting job right away either.
“Just a spot where there is a good veteran guy that I can learn behind for a couple of years and then hopefully get the chance to play,” Clemens said of his ideal situation.
Saturday marks quite a contrast from six months ago, when Clemens hobbled off Arizona’s football field with a season-ending ankle injury – one that a lot of people predicted would end Clemens’ football career. Instead, the senior emphasized both patience and hard work. Patience to allow the surgery to heal the injury and hard work to prove the naysayers wrong in April’s draft.
“I’m a football player again,” Clemens said. “I’m good cutting, running, twisting, turning, all that stuff.”
Since the NFL combine in February, Clemens has consistently climbed the draft boards and potentially into the second round, where ESPN analyst Chris Mortensen speculated he could be chosen by the New York Jets. It was quite a leap for someone who had to face the reality that he might not be drafted several months ago.
“My stock has risen consistently since the combine,” Clemens said. “It’s kind of tough right now because it’s just a big waiting game.”
Clemens said he predicts to be chosen between rounds three through five. His agent David Dunn, the President and CEO of Athletes First, thinks he will land somewhere in the “middle rounds.”
“I could sneak into day one or hopefully the first half of day two,” Clemens said in early April. “I’m kind of a wild card guy at this point. It’s all just a huge poker game.
“I’ve talked to a few quarterbacks that went through this thing in the previous years and the teams that actually ended up drafting them didn’t even talk to them from the season’s end to the draft. Because nobody wants to let anybody know that they are high on this guy or they are not high on this guy. Everybody wants to keep their cards close to their chest.”
Clemens has met with several teams, and Dunn said St. Louis, New England, Kansas City, Atlanta, Dallas, Cincinnati and the New York Jets are organizations that have shown the most interest.
“By how he’s performed in his workouts, he’s had a pretty significant number of teams come in,” Dunn said.
Dunn, who was hired last winter following Clemens’ final season as Oregon’s signal caller, has seen his client go full-circle from the initial meeting.
“The first time I met him was in December,” Dunn said. “He hobbled into the Cas Center on crutches, and it was an obvious and very visual concern. Now he has overcome that hurdle, and I’m thrilled with how all that has gone.”
While Clemens, Dunn and many football analysts are optimistic about Clemens’ potential, Dunn said he has seen it all and there are no perfect situations. All a person can hope for is good coaching, Dunn said.
“I’ve learned through the years that the evolution of a career can take many tracks, many different types of tracks,” he said. “I think something that has always been important to me is not so much who is in front of you or who is behind you, but what type of coaching you have. If he can go to a place that gives him some good, solid coaching I think both he and I will be happy.”
Dunn has spoken with many NFL general managers and numerous quarterbacks, including former Oregon great Joey Harrington – a client of Dunn’s – and the common denominator is that Kellen’s knowledge and “feel” of the sport is his greatest asset.
“He just has a great feel for the game,” Dunn said. “Sometimes you’ll have these guys who can throw the ball through a brick wall, but they don’t have any real feel. He just has a great, great feel for the game. And obviously wonderful athletic skills, but that instinct that he has, it’s a thing that can’t be coached.
“General managers are going to watch the film and are going to make their evaluations based on film,” Dunn added. “But what a lot of them will ask me is who he is like in my background, who I’d compare him with as a person. Quarterback is one position where it is not just what you are doing on the field. It’s how you are, what type of leader you are and what type of poise you possess. He is as well-balanced a player as I have worked with. When scouts as me about him, I’ll compare him to guys with characteristics like him, like a Jake Plummer or a Matt Hasselbeck, who I represent.”
The selection process
One of the most difficult tasks from moving on from college to the professional ranks is choosing an agent. To put complete trust in someone to negotiate how much money you will make isn’t a decision to be taken lightly and is one Clemens let his parents play a large part in.
“During the season, I referred everybody tomy parents,” Clemens said. “I talked to a couple of (agents), felt comfortable and then kind of cut it off for awhile. The bowl practices, during all that business, I sat down and interviewed three guys, felt really comfortable with two, felt really good with the one I went with, picked him and feel good with him so far.”
Clemens selected Dunn and his agency after a question-and-answer session in the Casanova Center in mid-December.
“I just sat in a room with them for a couple of hours just talking,” Dunn said. “They asked a bunch of questions. I really enjoy him and his family and his advisor group. It was a really neat process and it was done the right way so that he didn’t have to deal with it during the year.”
Trust is an element that Clemens’ felt he had with Dunn and his staff, especially when it comes to the financial side of the business.
“Where they really are going to earn their money is contract negotiations, not only with the team but in the sort of endorsement deals that you will be getting,” said Clemens, who also highlighted predraft marketing training as specialties of an agent.
Dunn said his role extends beyond negotiating contracts.
“Specifically, it’s negotiating his playing contract and his marketing contract,” he said. “But very generally there are 12 people in my office at Athletes First and what we do is we take care of anything. Taking care of him if he’s trapped in an airport, just making sure that all aspects of his life are comfortable.”
Athletes First represents more than 75 football players as well as several basketball and baseball athletes. It also represents four broadcasters such as Greg Anthony and Steve Young and several coaches. Former Oregon athletes currently being represented are quarterbacks Harrington, A.J. Feeley and Jason Fife and offensive lineman Adam Synder.
“I think that that school and that program attracts people who are a little better rounded,” Dunn said of Oregon.
Ducks on the board
This year’s class of Ducks in the draft might be one of the most extensive in school history led by defensive lineman Haloti Ngata, who is predicted to be a top 10 selection by nearly every football expert and ranked as the 10th-best player by Scouts Inc.
Along with Clemens and Ngata, former receiver Demetrius Williams is also predicted to be a first-day selection. Williams is ranked as the fifth-best receiver and predicted to go in the third round to Dallas by nfldraftcountdown.com. Foxsports.com has Williams a second-round selection to the New York Jets at pick #35 as the fourth-best receiver.
Draft analysts predict that tight end will be one of the top positions in thi
s year’s draft and Tim Day is the ninth-best at that position, according to nfldraftcountdown.com. He is the eight-best tight end according to Foxsports.com.
Defensive backs Aaron Gipson and Justin Phinisee as well as linebackers Anthony Trucks and Devan Long are four former Oregon defenders who could see second-day selections.
No matter where they land, Dunn said NFL Draft weekend is both exciting and long.
“It’s long, first of all,” Dunn said. “The draft is always longer than you think it’s going to be. It’s one of those where I don’t encourage guys to sit in front of the TV for the 12 hours in the first day of the draft. But it is awfully exciting because it is a graduation of sorts. You are graduating from one brand of football to the next, and hearing your name called is always exciting.”

[email protected]