April 4, 2020. A day I will never forget. Months of prep work and planning until you hear Roger Goddell in front of a record-breaking amount of viewers say,
“With the 37th pick in the NFL Draft, the New England Patriots select Kyle Dugger. Defensive Back. Lenoir-Rhyne.”
It was such a rush of emotion. As a department, we were both overly prepared for this moment and completely taken by surprise. Kyle was one of the top-rated safeties in the draft but not a single safety was drafted in the first round. Many mock drafts had him being drafted anywhere from the middle of the second round to the beginning of the fourth round and with no one at his position being drafted on day one, we weren’t sure how long of a wait we were in store for.
Turned out, our wait just five picks.
The buzz around Kyle being drafted started last spring. In training camp, all 32 NFL teams visited Lenoir-Rhyne. An injury-shortened Kyle’s senior season to just seven games but it was still good enough to win the Cliff Harris Award which is given to the best defensive player in Division II. Kyle went to the Senior Bowl and created a huge amount of buzz which only grew after a really strong showing at the Combine. In one of the coolest moments of this process, my phone dinged and alerted me the NFL had tweeted a video of Kyle’s broad jump.
Just 12 days after Kyle’s NFL Combine showing, COVID-19 wiped out an entire spring season and sent us all into quarantine. Before everything was shut down, I told my wife we needed to make the trip to Las Vegas. This was going to be a once-in-a-lifetime type of moment that I wanted to experience live and with her. After all, she sacrifices not seeing me on Saturdays from September to May so I wanted to have this moment for us to share. Instead, like millions of people, I was in front of a television.
Truth be told, I almost missed the pick. Juju Phillips, the voice of the Bears, and I had done a Facebook live show at 6 p.m. as a draft preview from our campus. I raced home to see the Giants selection and went upstairs to change out of my work clothes. While I was in my room, I heard Commissioner Goddell on the television and popped my head out of the bedroom just to make sure I didn’t miss anything. All I needed to hear was “The New England Patriots select Kyle…” and I raced downstairs. I called Filip Leskovar, our graphic designer who had the template set, he just needed to pop in the logo and the pick number for our graphic. Then I called Allison Luthman, our Director of Creative and Digital Media who had a video ready, she just needed to insert the logo of the team that picked Kyle. I am so proud of the content they produced and they stepped up in a major way.
Our social media exploded (@BearsSports), as did my email. I couldn’t keep up. I was getting texts, emails, twitter notifications and phone calls. I was trying to post a story online but had over 30 media outlets requesting information and my phone was buzzing like crazy. At the end of the weekend, our social media posts about Kyle being drafted had 1.7 million interactions.
On that night, Kyle Dugger transformed himself from a 0-star recruit that had 1 NCAA scholarship offer to the first draft pick by one of the most iconic and successful organizations in all of sports. Kyle will go down in history as the first pick of the post-Tom Brady era Patriots and will also forever be linked to Bill Belichick’s dog Nike who became an internet sensation seconds before Kyle’s selection.
Kyle Dugger put Lenoir-Rhyne on the map and it truly couldn’t have happened to a better person. I’ll forever be grateful to him for giving our department and university this opportunity and moment.
- Jeremy Zalacca (@JZtheSID)
Assistant AD for Athletics Communications at Lenoir-Rhyne
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