MOBILE, Alabama — Mike and Bill have been through this sort of thing before.
Back in the fall of 2013, if you recall.
They do.
At the time, Bill O’Brien was the second-year head coach of the Nittany Lions
And Mike Gesicki was a basketball star playing football at Southern Regional in Manahawkin, N.J.
The two big guys hit it off and Gesicki committed to Penn State and O’Brien on October 13, 2013.
Along with securing Christian Hackenberg and Adam Breneman a year earlier — Gesicki’s Penn State’s hosts, ironically, when he came to campus for an official visit — the 6-foot-6, 215-pound (at the time) tight end was one of O’Brien’s biggest recruiting gets.
It was one of his bigger wins while at Penn State, O’Brien said on Friday, while chatting in the lobby of the bowl headquarters, wearing a trademark grey sweatshirt, a ball cap and a whistle on a lanyard around his neck.
‘Hey, don’t forget: Mike was the one recruiting battle I won over Urban (Meyer),’ cracked O’Brien, with a bit of that 63-14 sting still in his voice. ‘It was good seeing him. He’s a great kid.’
A few months after Gesicki gave his verbal, O’Brien left for the Texans. But Gesicki stayed true to his commitment, and arrived in Happy Valley in June 2014.
‘Staying at Penn State was easy, even after Coach O’Brien left,’ Gesicki said. ‘Coach (James) Franklin offered me at Vanderbilt, so I already had that previous relationship with him.’
A NEW KIND OF RECRUITING
On Wednesday night — nearly a thousand miles from University Park and 1,564 days after Gesicki gave his OK on PSU to OB — player and coach resumed their shared football life.
Gesicki, Penn State’s all-time pass catcher at tight end, was at the Senior Bowl as a member of the North team. O’Brien, the head coach the NFL’s Houston Texans, was in town with his staff to coach the South team.
And, after Wednesday’s team practices were completed, the two spent some time together. On business. Reunited again, and to Gesicki — who finished his PSU career, with 129 catches for 1,481 yards and 15 TDs to go along with back-to-back 11-win seasons — it felt so good.
‘It was cool meeting with Coach O’Brien,’ said the characteristically upbeat Gesicki, a grin on his face as we chatted at the Senior Bowl HQ on Friday. ‘Obviously, I had the opportunity to get to know him during the recruiting process, and committed to him, and had those meetings back when I was in high school.
‘The meeting this week was a little different. He’s still the same guy, nothing has changed with that. I already had that previous relationship. It was cool, sitting in a meeting with an NFL team, but having a relationship with the head coach.’
Player-team meetings at the Senior Bowl are different than those during the hectic days of the NFL Combine, to be held the first week of March in Indianapolis. (Gesicki will be there; you can watch him live on NFL Network on Saturday, March 3, along with the invited quarterbacks and wide receivers, including Penn State teammate DaeSean Hamilton. Details are here.)
At the Combine, each NFL team schedules official interviews with players in 15-minute increments. Players must attend those sessions, and there’s a great deal of regimentation. At the Senior Bowl, time is more fluid and meetings with team are not mandatory, although they are encouraged. (One NFL team pointedly tried, to no avail, to secure a meeting, with Heisman Trophy winner Baker Mayfield while in Mobile.)
Team scouts, coaches and executives grab players at the bowl hotel lobby, during sessions at the convention center across the street or through meetings in team suites. Interviews pop up everywhere, and can range from 5 to 30 minutes.
‘The meetings here are good, because they get a lot of background information,’ Gesicki explained. ‘But Coach O’Brien already knows me. He knew me in high school and had met my parents (Michael and Donna, who traveled to Mobile for the game). We talked X’s and O’s. We talked about my film, and the potential that I have and where they see I would play, and at what position.’
WHAT GESICKI IS GOOD AT
Gesicki’s meeting with O’Brien was just one of 32 for him last week. Gesicki thinks he met with a representative of every team in the week leading to Saturday’s game, when caught a team-high three passes for 39 yards (5, 22 and 12 yards), and showed strong and consistent blocking skills as a conventional tight end and at H-back.
As we talked on Friday, Gesicki leaned forward in his easy chair and was enthusiastic about the entire process, which is a protracted job prep and interview journey that extends from the Senior Bowl to the Combine to Pro Day in mid-March at Penn State, all sandwiched in with a bunch of training at the EXOS performance center in Pensacola, Florida, about an hour to the east of Mobile. He was literally at the edge of his seat.
‘Meeting with teams here has been a great experience,’ he said. ‘You’re sitting in meetings, they’re bringing up film, they’re drawing up X’s and O’s. They’re seeing what you know. They’re trying to test you a little bit.
‘Teams are talking to me about the potential I have as the game is evolving in the NFL and how I fit into those systems. They talked about my progression from the time I got to Penn State four years ago to the time I left, and how as a player I’ve improved. So, the player I am now and the player they see me as. I haven’t scratched the surface in terms of the player I can be and the potential I have. It’s exciting to hear that from the next level as well.’
Although Gesicki spent over half his time on the field Saturday lined up next to the offensive tackle, he said he expects to be used all over the field — just like he was at Penn State. He did split wide right one time, when the North went for a two-point conversion. Wyoming quarterback Josh Allen threw to Gesicki on the play, but the toss was low — Allen’s bad — and although Gesicki tried to leap up and over the defender, he couldn’t come down with the ball.
‘In a lot of NFL systems, there’s the Y and the F tight ends,’ Gesicki explained. ‘The Y is the inline, more traditional tight end. And the F you put in the backfield, in the slot, sometimes he’s attached, sometimes he’s detached, sometimes he’s on the line blocking, he’s receiving. That’s where a lot of teams see me, being able to utilize my athletic ability, my versatility, my play-making ability — all those things.’
BUMPING INTO BIG NAMES
Gesicki ran into a lot of big names at the Senior Bowl, not just in meetings but on the practice field as well.
‘You go to practice, and look over and it’s amazing who you’ll see,’ he said. ‘At practice, I ran a route, caught a ball, got my feet in-bounds along the sidelines and looked up. I was standing next to John Elway. Dan Marino was standing right there and so was John Lynch. There were people like that everywhere.’
It didn’t faze him: ‘I’ve been around it. I’ve been playing at Penn State against the best competition, with all these big-name coaches and players, so when you get this opportunity it’s the same.’
In fact, Gesicki said he’s well-prepared for the grind that will continue for the next few months. He’s been in contact with both Hackenberg, now with the New York Jets, and fellow former Nittany Lion tight end Jesse James, now with the Pittsburgh Steelers.
‘A bunch of my friends have gone through this process before,’ Gesicki said. ‘Right before the season and during this process, I got on the phone and called Jesse and I called Hack. l’ve seen how the process goes and how they handled it, and some things that kind of took them by surprise. It has helped me, since a lot of what they told me ultimately didn’t take me by surprise. I’ve been one step ahead of the game in that aspect of it, because I’ve had guys who’ve shared their experiences of going through it.’
PLANNING HIS WORK
Overall, his time at the Senior Bowl went as well — if not better — than he had planned.
‘I think I definitely helped myself this week,’ he said. ‘I played really well and made a lot of plays. A lot of people told me that I look better in person vs. film in terms of how I move and my play-making ability and my routes. I blocked really well this week. So a lot of things went as I planned them to go this week.
‘But,’ Gesicki concluded, with the kind of caution and focus that fueled his monster junior and senior seasons, ‘we still have the Combine, Pro Day, my work at EXOS and lots of meetings to go to.’
