Arrowhead Pride
The former Fresno State receiver is an intriguing prospect.
Maybe it’s just summer love.
Like all good training camp crushes, the romance might end with the last summer sunset, when the leaves turn gold and the air gets cold. But right now, it’s June.
The sun is raging — hot and proud in the sky — and our world feels full of infinite possibilities... including the possibility that the wide receiver we’ve been searching our whole lives for isn’t some 6-foot-2, 225-pound blue-chip first-rounder from a Power Five school.
Instead, it’s a 5-foot-10, 176-pound flier from Fresno State with enough pomade in his hair to either join a boy band or manage the Sunglass Hut at Oak Park Mall.
The guy I’m talking about is Kansas City Chiefs undrafted rookie free agent wide receiver Mac Dalena. He’s undersized, played in the Mountain West and didn’t get an invite to the NFL Combine, the Senior Bowl — or even the East-West Shrine Game.
But I still watched him.
And I walked away with full-on Lady Gaga eyes over his potential as a bottom-of-the-roster guy, or maybe even someone the Chiefs can stash on the practice squad and develop into a legitimate special-teams contributor.
Keep in mind: if Dalena only turns into the next Nikko Remigio, that’s a win by UDFA standards.
A Fresno native, Dalena was a three-star recruit out of San Joaquin Memorial High School, opting to stay home and play for the Bulldogs. Part of the 2020 class, he was ranked the 250th wide receiver nationally and 185th in California.
His athletic profile didn’t exactly jump off the page at the time. He clocked a 4.59-second 40-yard dash, had a 33-inch vertical and weighed just 159 pounds as a high schooler.
Still, he caught 58 passes for 1,060 yards and 17 touchdowns. And by the time he was a senior in 2020, his highlight reel was legit fun to watch.
The good times kept rolling at Fresno State.
Dalena packed on 20 pounds of muscle, added five inches to his vertical and — somehow — shaved a whopping .23 seconds off his 40 time.
He went from a 4.59 to a blistering 4.36 — but Dalena was still unsatisfied.
A senior-year breakout star, Dalena smoked Mountain West competition like a full slab at Arthur Bryant’s, racking up 64 catches for 1,065 yards and eight touchdowns.
Indeed, a significant portion of his production came on big plays where he simply outran lesser athletes. But what really grabbed me was his work underneath — particularly in the slot. Dalena has shown he can line up at all three receiver spots.
He has a natural feel for soft zones, a knack for getting open, and he’s the kind of quarterback-friendly receiver who never quits on a route, always working back to the ball when things break down.
Though undersized, Dalena is tough-minded and fights for extra yards. He’s got strong hands, performs better on 50/50...
