Arrowhead Pride
By the fifth round of any NFL Draft, it is worth wondering how highly teams value their selections. That isn’t the case for Kansas City Chiefs’ rookie linebacker Jeff Bassa, whom the team acquired out of Oregon by trading up to the 156th pick of April’s NFL Draft.
It was a gratifying moment for the safety-turned-linebacker.
“When a team does move up to get you,” he explained after Tuesday’s training camp practice at Missouri Western State University in St. Joseph, “it means that you’re high on their board — or they’ve got a lot of confidence in you and what you can do for their team. Right when I saw that they’d traded the pick, it meant a lot.”
The Chiefs undoubtedly understood that Bassa would enter the league with an important NFL skill that he’s already mastered: film study.
“When I first started playing football in my freshman year of high school,” he recalled, “I always was intrigued. I’d go to YouTube, and I’d type in like, ‘NFL film breakdowns’ or ‘college film breakdowns’ of people just talking about, ‘Oh, the Chiefs are in this shell.’ Or, ‘Well, they’re trying to dial up the defense and know we’re running, but it’s really complex.’ Little things like that is where I really got that film itch.”
In college, Bassa took his study to the next level.
“I got to the point where I fully knew the defense like the back of my hand,” he said. “Now, I’m studying offenses. What’s the quarterback’s read on this concept? Or what [does] the running back track on this type of run? So now, that’s something that I’m trying to do [at] the elite level.”
He is putting his skills to work in St. Joseph, even after hours – and sometimes based on a coach’s comments to another player.
“If we have a heavy install,” said Bassa, “at night I like to go back home — or go back to the dorm room, I should say — and study that for about 30 minutes to an hour. Kind of just going over my notes, but I take a lot of pride in taking good notes in the film room when coaches are [making] corrections. Or [if they’re] just coaching up another guy on a different technique, then I’m still going to take those notes so I can be the guy that can learn from his example.
“Being one of the first guys out here when it comes to practice, that’s something I’ve been doing since my freshman year of college: just always being a guy who just comes out here and is working on my craft, whether that’s striking blocks or dropping into zone coverage. Then when it comes to learning the playbook, that’s also coming out here. I’ve got a call sheet – what calls are we going to run against certain formations — right here. I’m just going through the calls in my head and just getting myself mentally right before practice...
