Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1520787
5 6 J U N E / J U L Y 2 0 2 4 W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M played, totaling 588 tackles, 20 intercep- tions and 4 defensive touchdowns. After he was done playing, Zordich got into coaching. He started out at Cardinal Mooney High in his native Youngstown, Ohio — a job that he fell into by sheer hap- penstance. His great uncle Don Bucci was Mooney's longtime head coach, and the two men ran into each other at a family gathering. Bucci asked the retired NFL star to come by the school to talk to his players. The next thing he knew, Zordich was on the staff. He went on to coach for the Eagles, along with college stints at Youngstown State and Michigan. His son, also named Michael, was a fullback and linebacker at Penn State, and one of the leaders of the much-beloved 2012 team that stayed together and delivered an eight-win sea- son after the NCAA levied its devastating sanctions in connection with the San- dusky scandal. The elder Zordich is now gearing up for his fifth season as defensive backs coach at Central Michigan — the latest chapter in a football life he could surely never have envisioned when he was waiting for the phone to ring back in the fall of 1986. Late-Round Lions Another late-round Penn State defen- sive back who has prospered since reach- ing the NFL is Nick Scott. He started out as a running back at PSU, but he had an epiphany early in the 2015 season when a true freshman named Saquon Barkley began getting carries as part of the back- field rotation. Scott realized that if he was going to play the kind of role he wanted to play, he was going to have to switch positions. After the season, he asked the coaches to move him to safety. That proved to be a farsighted deci- sion. While Scott wasn't taken until the seventh round (243rd overall) by the Los Angeles Rams in 2019, he has since gone on to play five pro seasons. He won a Super Bowl ring with the Rams in 2021, spent last year in Cincinnati and in March signed with Carolina. This is not just a story about defensive backs, though. A disproportionate num- ber of Penn State's late-round successes involve offensive linemen — perhaps an indication of how difficult it is to scout those positions. Brad Benson, an honorable mention All-American at Penn State, was taken in the eighth round of the 1977 draft (219th overall) by New England. He never played a single snap for the Patriots but was picked up by the New York Giants and spent the next decade in their starting lineup. His best season was in 1986 when he made the Pro Bowl at left tackle and earned a championship ring after the Gi- ants defeated Denver in Super Bowl XXI. Marco Rivera, a starting guard on Penn State's unbeaten Rose Bowl championship team of 1994, wasn't taken until Green Bay grabbed him in the sixth round with the 208th overall pick in 1996. He went on to become a three-time Pro Bowler, a starter on the Green Bay team that won Super Bowl XXXI and a member of the Packers Hall of Fame. Center A.Q. Shipley went to Pitts- burgh in the seventh round of the 2009 draft (pick No. 226). After spending his first NFL season on the Steelers' prac- tice squad, he started 72 games over the next 11 years, seeing action with Phila- delphia, Indianapolis, Baltimore, Arizona and Tampa Bay. He was part of the 2020 Buccaneers team that won Super Bowl LV over Kansas City. That trend of seventh-round over- achievement continues to this day, with Will Fries (pick No. 248 in 2021) starting at guard for the Indianapolis Colts and Rasheed Walker (pick No. 249 in 2022) having developed into a first-teamer at tackle in Green Bay. King overlapped with Walker at Penn State during the 2021 season and hopes to experience some of the same success that other Nittany Lions have found even after having to wait for their selection. Rather than eroding his self-confidence, he said the neglect he felt during the draft has only fueled a desire to prove those other 31 teams wrong. "I don't know exactly what they didn't see," King said. "All I know is that Green Bay saw something in me, and I'm happy that they saw what they saw. I'm glad they took a chance, and I'm happy to be here." ■ Cornerback Kalen King was disappointed to slip into the seventh round of the 2024 draft where he was chosen by Green Bay. "I went through every emotion on draft weekend," King said. PHOTO BY DANIEL ALTHOUSE