A couple of weeks before Clemson’s basketball season ended last month, Naz Bohannon got wind of a question floating around the agent world about him: Was the Tigers’ senior forward interested in pursuing a professional career once it was over?
Only the inquiry wasn’t about basketball.
Six years ago, Bohannon was a standout two-sport athlete in high school who piqued some Power Five football programs’ interest on the recruiting trail. He hasn’t played a down of football since, but he remembers being contacted around the same time last year about scratching the football itch again.
So once Bohannon found out agents were interested in representing him as an NFL prospect this year, that was all he needed to hear.
“It always stayed on my mind since that moment throughout this entire year,” Bohannon said in a phone interview with The Clemson Insider.
Declaring himself eligible for the NFL Draft shortly after the basketball season ended, Bohannon is the only former Clemson athlete that didn’t play football last year hoping to hear his name called during the three-day draft beginning today (7 p.m., ESPN), though he’s realistic about the chances of that happening. Bohannon is trying to crack a 53-man roster as a 6-foot-6 tight end after spending the last five years playing basketball, the first four at Youngstown State.
“Without film and everything, it’s hard for anybody,” Bohannon said. “If I’m a (general manager), it’s like, ‘How do I take a shot on a ghost almost?’”
But Bohannon said he’s done everything he can over the last month to get teams more familiar with him. That has included shooting video of his training sessions, which consist of hours of weight lifting, body workouts, speed work, footwork drills and route running on a near daily basis. The last time Bohannon had done any sort of football-related activity before now was his senior season at Lorain (Ohio) High School in 2016.
“Once I got to doing the footwork and those things again, it all came back to me,” Bohannon said. “Because it’s not like I haven’t done it before.”
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Bohannon could have played football in college. He said he played “all over the place” on the football field at Lorain, including defensive end, outside linebacker, tight end and a little bit of receiver. Major schools took notice of the long, rangy athlete.
Michigan State ended up extending him a football scholarship. Growing up in Big Ten country, the assumption was Bohannon was going to take the Spartans up on their offer, which he said hurt his recruitment in basketball. Some mid-majors talked to him about possibly playing both sports in college, though Bohannon knew that wasn’t realistic given the time demands.
He ultimately chose to stay close to home at the one in Youngstown, Ohio.
“I love both of the sports dearly, but it was something about basketball that just had a hold on me,” Bohannon said. “It’s just different. It’s a feeling. I always explain it to guys like if we were 50 (years old) and me and my buddies wanted to go outside, and say we were going to play one-on-one and shoot it around or say we were going to play Pig, we can still say we want to go hoop and things of that sort. Football doesn’t give everybody that same feeling.
“If you love it, you love it. And you do it. But we know there’s just some point we just can’t put on pads and go out there. We can’t take the contact. We can’t do all of that.”
Bohannon scored more than 1,200 career points at Youngstown State and finished just 10 boards shy of becoming the program’s first-ever 1,000-point, 1,000-rebound club member. Bohannon decided to use his COVID year to make the jump to the high-major level as a graduate transfer this past season and ended up at Clemson, where he averaged 5.7 points and 4.0 rebounds in 33 games as a member of the Tigers’ frontcourt.
He admitted it was hard for him to shake Clemson’s season-ending loss to Virginia Tech in the ACC Tournament knowing it was his last college basketball game, but after a couple of days, he switched his focus solely to football. The most difficult part of the transition, Bohannon said, has been bulking up. After playing this past season at 225 pounds – the lightest weight he’d been at since his freshman year – Bohannon said he weighed in earlier this week at 240 pounds, using his workouts and a 5,600-calorie-a-day meal plan that includes plenty of chicken, peanut butter and protein powder to help pack on the pounds.
Bohannon said he would like to add a few more as a happy medium between showing NFL teams he’s serious about being able to hold up physically as a tight end while also maintaining the kind of speed and agility that could make him more versatile at the position, thus making himself a more appealing option for them. But nearly everything about playing football has come back naturally to Bohannon, whose background on the hardwood translates to the gridiron in some aspects, making for a more comfortable transition.
“The way my mind works, just being able to correlate football things and football mechanics and targeting the basketball in my head,” Bohannon said. “Running pivot routes or stick routes and just associating to me, ‘OK, get here and post this guy up.’ Or here’s how I would box him out. Or just the agility piece, the quickness and the footwork. A lot of the footwork is different, but there are a lot of things that you can use that’s transferrable. Going up to get the ball. Anytime I get a jump ball or I’m working on jump balls, in my head, I’m correlating it to going up and grabbing rebounds off the rim.”
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There are also other stories of college basketball players successfully transitioning to professional football that Bohannon said are keeping him motivated in his bid to follow in their footsteps.
Former All-Pro tight end Antonio Gates (Kent State) and NFL Hall of Famer Tony Gonzalez (Cal) both starred on the hardwood in college. So did Jimmy Graham (Miami) and Mo Alie-Cox (VCU), who just signed a three-year, $18-million contract extension with the Indianapolis Colts after going undrafted in 2017. There’s also former Colts tight end Marcus Pollard, whom Bohannon’s agent, Glenn Schwartzman, represented during his 14-year NFL career after Pollard also played mid-major basketball at Bradley.
“I always say if God brings you to it, he’ll bring you through it,” Bohannon said. “(Agents) came and looked for me for this opportunity. It wasn’t something I went and vouched for, so I’m attacking it with an open mind.”
Bohannon said he’s garnered some interest from teams during the pre-draft process. While he didn’t want to reveal which ones specifically, he said there have been four that have spoken to his camp about potentially signing him as an undrafted free agent or bringing him in for a rookie minicamp tryout.
Bohannon also attended Clemson’s pro day last month. While he didn’t participate, it gave him a chance to introduce himself to some of the personnel on hand for all 32 NFL teams. As for what Bohannon could provide one of them, he said it’s about more than just physical ability.
“I just want them to know they’re bringing in a guy who is all about winning,” Bohannon said. “Outside of the sport, every intangible you can look for, that’s my makeup. That’s what’s gotten me as far as I’ve got, and that’s what I will continue to be and continue to do to help any organization. That gritty, hard-nosed guy that’s willing to do whatever is needed to be done to win.
“From a playing standpoint, a guy that you can be versatile with that, with the growth and learning, being able to pick up and learn fast. I’m willing to go out here and run a route, but I’m also willing to stick my nose in there and go lay a block if I need to.”
Bohannon has spent the last month splitting his time between Ohio and Clemson, but he said he plans to make the trip back home this weekend to spend it with family just in case a team calls at some point.
“For a moment like that, even if it is just as a free agent, it’s that small moment of elation before you know that the work just now begins,” he said.
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