Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Vikings tight end Tyler Conklin tells his unique NFL story

Episode Date: May 29, 2020

Conklin breaks down how he went from a basketball player in high school to an NFL tight end, from starring in high school to changing his mind to playing defensive end to now playing a role in a Vikings offense that demands a lot out of its tight ends.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Be sure to subscribe to the show on Spotify, Apple, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. Hey everybody, welcome into another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar with you. And I want to remind you to go to purpleinsider.com. That's where you can subscribe to all of my written work covering the Minnesota Vikings. And if you could rate and review this podcast, that would be a major, major help. It allows other Vikings fans to find this podcast when they go searching and type in Vikings in whatever podcast app they're using. If you rate and review, this will be the first one that comes up. So it is greatly appreciated. All right, now we welcome into the show Minnesota Vikings tight end Tyler Conklin. Tyler, how are you holding up during coronavirus, sir? I'm holding up. It's actually been a good time

for me and my family. It's a lot of quality time my brother just left for the navy so um it was good to see him a bunch before he had to head out so uh definitely had his perks but um it's definitely starting to get tough with how long i've been going on for yeah no that's for sure i mean there's only so many things on netflix that you can watch um what have you been doing to adjust workouts and things like that i know that you guys are on zoom calls and everything else to learn uh what you still need to know about the offense an offense that you were in last year but keeping yourself in shape cannot be the same as it would have been if you were at the facility right yeah it's a little more difficult um a good friend of mine right down the street has uh like a workout a workout

thing set up in his room and uh i mean a lot of the high schools are locked up but you can maneuver around some fences and get on the field to get some field work so um i really just been doing those two things and a little bit of physical therapy just to make my body feel good now that it's uh some stuff is kind of starting to slightly uh open up but those are probably the three main things all right tyler i want to get into eventually kind of this offense and why it works so well for tight ends but first i want people to know you a little better after listening to this podcast so you were in high school a really really good basketball player and that's where you initially uh went for college on on a scholarship was to go play basketball can we can we talk a little bit about you playing high school

basketball like give me the breakdown of what tyler conklin is like as a high school basketball player oh first off a lot smaller but um yeah i bet that's basketball football i've played basketball football growing up my whole life. And basketball was probably my true love growing up. I was always in the gym. I was a gym rat. I loved it. And going into high school, our higher school program for football was on 27 going through my senior year.

Oh, wow. Ran an unbalanced offense. It just wasn't a very attractive situation. And basketball, we always had a pretty good basketball team for our county and our area, and we just kind of had a special group of people coming together from the middle schools, and a lot of people I'm still friends with to this day. And we all ended up going to the same high school, and kind of sticking together, and a lot of people tend to maybe go to a private school or try to take maybe what they think is a better route.

And we ended up having a really successful high school basketball program. We went to the final four in my junior year and lost to the Breslin Center, Saginaw. And that was the farthest the team from my county's been ever. So that was a huge accomplishment for us. And then going into senior year, we're ranked fourth in the state, and we're on the top 20 player in the state. And

we make it to the regional finals and lose a heartbreaking over-the-top game that we still kind of haunt us to this day. But just had a really successful basketball program throughout high school. And like I said earlier, football on 27 and an unbalanced offense just wasn't, you know, just very attractive. So then I was kind of trying to decide if I was going to play my senior year, just focus on basketball.

And I almost didn't play. One of my best friends, he was a quarterback at the time. And he asked me, he was like, come on, man, you got to play. You got to finish it out. So I ended up playing. And we got a quarterback at the time. He was like, come on, man. We got to finish it out. I ended up playing. We got a new coach that year. We had a preseason meeting. He was saying, oh, we're going to host our first ever playoff game, win a playoff game.

Everybody's sitting there like, yeah, that's bullshit. Then we look forward to the end of the season. We finish the season 8-3, and we win and host our first ever playoff game and end up losing the district finals. But to go from 0-27 to that was a huge accomplishment. Yeah, that is amazing.

That's an incredible turnaround. We had a lot of talent to coach and just wasn't there at the time. And then football recruiting picked up, and I just kind of, you know, just stuck with what I, my true love was at that time. I just thought that I didn't want to waste everything I've done for basketball my whole entire life for one good year of football. And I ended up signing early signing period on a full ride to go to Northwood. And I know that's part of the story of against it. Well, I want to know what kind of basketball player you were.

Like, so you grow up in Michigan. Obviously, you're too young to know the bad boy Detroit Pistons, or at least to have seen them in any other capacity than YouTube and on the Jordan documentary. But would it have been, what, like a Chauncey Billups? Would you have been a Rip Hamilton guy? Were you a Detroit Pistons fan? Rip Hamilton was probably my favorite Pistons on that all-four team.

But, I mean, I played in high school. I played point guard. I mean, I was 6'4". I was skinny, 185 pounds. My senior year graduated. I was pretty skinny, but I was a tall point guard. And, you know, I shot the ball pretty – I shot a mid-range jumper pretty well. I was trying to shoot 50% from three, but I shot like 25% from 50%.

I had a pretty good supporting cast, so I didn't ever think I needed to shoot too much. When I got to the basket, I had a couple good dunks, putting people on posters. I was a pretty good all-around basketball player. I think I used to average about 15, 8, and 6, or something along those lines. Filling up the box score. You know, it's funny because when you say a tight end used to play basketball, you think of, like, you know, 6'7 or something.

You know, you think, oh, he must have been a power forward. It must be Tony Gonzalez or it must be Kyle Rudolph. Like, you might be the first point guard turned tight end in history. Yeah, it kind of seems like that because everybody else, you play point guard, I'm like, I mean, I was 70 pounds lighter. I had short hair, no tattoos. I was a completely different person at that time in my life. So whenever I sat by point guard, first of all, I was like, oh, I'm weak.

Or they got to bring up a picture from high school or something and then no one believes that that's me i'm not making it up so you're kind of like the freshman year senior year meme on twitter uh basically the living version of it so you end up playing basketball just for like one semester and then going to you you know, Central Michigan to play football. Tell me about that decision. Yeah, so I played my first seven games at Northwood as a true freshman. I just wasn't very happy with where I was at. I promised my family growing up when I was little that I was going to be the first D1 athlete

and that I was going to go pro. I mean, since I was a little kid, every time I used to borrow money from my mom, I'd pay it back one day when I made it. I get to North Florida. It's a smaller division two school. It's an all business school. I signed early signing period.

I just really didn't know how to handle that whole college situation at the time. It was the first for my family. When I signed it early and I got there, I just felt like I wasn't know how to handle that whole college situation, I think, at the time. It was a first for my family. And so I was signing early. And I got there. I just felt like I wasn't happy. So I kind of just stopped pondering between maybe transferring and going to play at a mid-major basketball program like U of D or Oakland or Eastern

because a lot of those schools recruited me in high school. And then I started looking at football. And, I don't know it just I love football growing up and I mean I had a great senior year and then I ended up getting in touch with

Central Michigan and it was in Central Michigan and Michigan State and coming out of high school my junior they had a junior day

and they brought me up there and I left it and I'm like there's no way I play college football like practice was long the coaches were screaming I'm like, there's no way I play college football. Practices were on, the coaches were screaming. I'm like, I'm going to stick to basketball.

It's hot outside. And then whatever, three years later, I get in touch with Coach Cummings, who was a recruiter for my area who I talked to throughout college, I mean throughout high school, and asked him if I could walk on because I didn't have a math class to get into Michigan State.

They were going to allow me to walk on. I didn't have a math class. So Coach Cummings essentially gave me the opportunity could walk on because I didn't have a math class to get into Michigan State. They were going to allow me to walk on. I didn't have a math class. So Coach Cummings essentially gave me the opportunity to walk on. And he told me I could come for the spring, but wouldn't guarantee me a spot in the fall on the 105-man roster. But they gave me a spot in the spring. So I ended up transferring and leaving the Full Rise Scholarship. I mean, my grandparents and stuff didn't think it was a great idea at the time.

And walking on, and I got up there like a week before I was getting there. Coach Cummings actually left and took a job as the offensive line coach at UConn. So I'm like, the one coach that I knew that recruited me is gone now. So, sorry. But still going up there and getting there. And, I mean, I played wide receiver for about my first four weeks, and then they moved me to DN for the last week of spring ball. I wasn't extremely happy about DN.

I was about 205 pounds. It was stressful trying to hold the C-gap down. I mean, rushing the pass was fun, but holding the C-gap in the run game was a pain in the butt for me weighing 200 pounds. So I ended up going home that summer and working construction, I mean, rushing the passer was fun, but holding the C gap in the run game was a pain in the butt for me when I went into my finals. So I ended up going home that summer and working construction, trying to make some money. And I was thinking about going to a small school and playing both sports,

just football and basketball. And I ended up asking them to move me to tight end. And I ended up walking on, been there for a semester, played receiver in DM. There was a good chance that they just, we're not going to move you. They ended up moving me, and I went into camp that next, my sophomore year, like eight tight ends. Started working my way up. So if I had told you at that point, hey, you're going to be in the NFL and play,

like not just, hey, you make a practice squad or something, but in the game, in the NFL a few years after that, I mean, what, you make a practice squad or something, but in the game, in the NFL, a few years after that. I mean, what would you have said? I would have believed it 100%. I don't know. Growing up, I just always felt like I was destined to. I mean, growing up, I thought it was basketball. But as soon as I moved, I just always believed it.

I mean, watching other tight ends and learning what I could do and how fast I was growing. I had a great tight end coach at Central Michigan. and Coach Jerome Moore, who's now at Michigan. I mean, he was huge for me having to transition and being that raw and being as good of a coach as he was. So I truly always believed it. I always tell people, like, it is kind of hard to believe that I felt that way. Because, you know, it just seems like such a long shot. I mean, you tell your parents you wanted to go to that play in the NFL or NBA. You know, they want to believe in you because they're your kids.

But, I mean, it's just a long shot. It's a hard thing to do. I can say, honestly, I always truly believed that I'd make it happen. You know, it doesn't really the time that you became a tight end in the mac conference of actually becoming an nfl tight end but uh to in order to put in the dedication and the work ethic that it would take to go from where you were to where you are now you would have to have a preposterous amount of belief in yourself i think because otherwise you just be like well you, you know, whatever.

I got the scholarship. And I think that a lot of players are like that. Like they never see that as any type of reality. So why put in the type of effort that it takes? I mean, it must have – there has to be something there in order to drive you, right? Yeah, I think you hit it kind of perfectly right there. When I first got to Central, I figured, it's D1. That was huge for me.

First goal was done. I told my parents I'd be a D1 athlete. I did it. I get there, and I talk to people. One of my roommates at the time was the offensive lineman. I remember just walking and talking to him. He was saying how he wanted, when he was done, he wanted to be a teacher. It was just weird to me because I'm thinking, like,

everybody that played at the visual level as a football player, why would you not think or want to play in the NFL? Why would that not be the number one goal if you already made it this far? I remember about my freshman year, I ran, like, my second semester there, and I really always shot, and I forget things. I just, it was, but said, everybody has a different goal. Some people use it to go to school and get to where they want to be. And for me, it was just always the goal for me to be a professional athlete. So I kind of realized that reality pretty early in my career.

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with ex-Chicago Bulls Ron Harper, Horace Grant, Bill Cartwright, and Craig Hodges to discuss the Michael Jordan documentary on what they are calling the Final Dance. Visit BetOnline.ag and use the promo code BLUEWIRE to receive your new welcome bonus and check out all the action. BetOnline, your online wagering solution. I wonder when it was during your Central Michigan career that you felt like that could be a reality. I would probably say when I first got to Central, I didn't even

know how to get to the locker room properly. It was such a whirlwind. It took me about six months for the higher grades to get to the locker room so fast compared to how I was doing it. Then going into my sophomore year after moving to be an eight tight end on eight tight ends and comparing myself to people and seeing

how I felt in the reality of things. When I finally played after I sat out a year and a half at the redshirt, I played behind Ben McCord, who was a guy in front of me. He was a good tight end from the same area, from Macomb County. He ended up having 550 yards, I think, five touchdowns. He did a good senior year. After watching him do that, I just felt that there was no way I wasn't going to go to that NFL

and get drafted. I just thought that. I know he was in. I was watching him do his workouts, or he would talk to me about his NFL team to come and work him out or how the process was going for him. So probably my sophomore year being a backup behind him and kind of moving my way up to

second string, I just really saw how well, how good he was as a player and what was happening for him. And I knew what I could be as a player. And that's probably about the time I realized I could do it. Such a long road to get there, but attainable at a position like yours, if you have a certain skill set that I think that basketball tends to translate really well to being either a receiver or a tight end for some reason I know Adam Thielen is the same way he was a terrific basketball player and there's something about being able to track the ball I don't know what exactly it is but with him he's so good like the footwork when the ball's coming his way is there some connection there i've

never really been able to quite put it together but it almost seems like guys who dominated basketball are really great at that like like the you know contested catches and things like that that made you really stand out uh in college well first i might have to i gotta see adam play one of these days first before i can see how dominant he was. Yeah, I think the main thing that always kind of popped up to me when he asked me at first, I think everybody wants to say, oh, rebound. And I think it's more just the fluidity that comes along with basketball. It's such a reaction game, whether you're on offense, defense,

jump before a rebound, kind of feel the pass. Just the fluidity and the rhythm that kind of comes along with being a good basketball player, especially if you're handling the ball. I mean, that translates to breaks and releases and things of that nature. And then rebounding, offensive, defensive, rebounding, both, just the reacting and being able to have a second jump or, you know, going up and competing for the ball at the highest point. Those are things that really translate immediately, in my opinion.

Yeah, no, I agree with you. And just sort of a general coordination, like if you don't have that, it's going to be really tough. I will tell you that one time Delvin Cook did not believe that I could shoot from deep. And so he challenged me and came to the park near my house and I made 29 out of 53s so someday there's got to be a media versus player three-point contest and I will lead the way oh yeah I'll be I'll be down for that I'm not going to make a bet if you sound like that but yeah and with a little wind I'll throw it out there he he bet me that I couldn't make 30 because that's what I usually do I usually shoot 50 when I go to play and usually somewhere in the 30 range.

I made 29, so it was a little short. But there is video evidence of this, so I'll have to show you sometime when we're allowed to be back near each other. So I'm really interested, Tyler, in making the team and carving out a role for yourself with the Vikings because it's so tough, man. I mean, you come from the MAC, which is a great conference. You mentioned a lot of NFL players were there. I don't know if you ever crossed paths.

Maybe Khalil Mack was too early for you in the MAC conference. Yeah, he was. But, you know, so here's a guy who was a top draft pick, so I don't mean to downplay that at all. But the jump from college to the NFL, even for guys at Bama, is massive. You carve out a role for yourself, and you've got this tight end room that might be the best in the NFL with Kyle Rudolph and Irv Smith and yourself. Do you remember going into that first training camp and your mentality and trying to make

an impression right away as a guy who was taken in the fifth round? Yeah. I always told people that being a walk-on probably was the best thing that ever happened to me because it taught me how to prevail over adversity. It taught me how to be at the very bottom and work your way up. Not at the very bottom at the fifth round pitch,

but in essence, you can be. I remember when we had, at that time, David Morton, a very good tight end, David Ward, who was a very good tight end. Now, obviously, he's a pro bowler. So just the things that I learned, you know, is keep it quiet until you're in your stripes and just trying to, you know, make a name for yourself by what you do and not what you say were all big things for me my rookie year.

I mean, our rookie year was tough. I pulled my hamstring in rookie mini camp and didn't participate in any OTAs. So the first time I was in a huddle or even got a snap was in camp. That was tough for me, learning the playbook without ever doing that really. So rookie year definitely had its bumps, but I just always had faith in the tight end I am. Just the way I move, the way I run my routes. Like I was going to say, I was more of a path catching tight end in college I've kind of been in the role of doing a lot of

blocking so far and I think it's been good for me because I've really improved on it at the time and I've kind of been showing people that it's something I can do when people doubted that I couldn't and that's what got me here today is being good at the things that and getting better at things that I couldn't do

or people said I couldn't do so finding my, and getting better at things that I couldn't do or people said I couldn't do. So, you know, finding my weaknesses and getting better really helped me, I think, find a role on this team. Now, I don't know how much you knew about Gary Kubiak before he came here, but there are guys throughout the past who became really, really successful as tight ends, whether it was in the star type of role, like a Shannon Sharp, or it was in sort of, you know, a number two receiving option type of role like Owen Daniels, or even there were guys throughout his history who were number three tight

ends who would come in and make big plays for their team under Kubiak. The man loves his tight ends. He loves his big personnel, you know 13 personnel things like that um did you know how much tight ends were used in that system before he got here and what was your kind of reaction when you started to install the offense and see like uh this is really different from what you had before with john d filippo yeah um i i didn't know a good amount about it and i'm really excited about it anytime you can go and um let me go back to what you said. We have one of the best tight end rooms in the NFL,

and we have three athletic tight ends that we can all block. We can all run routes. We can all catch. I think we're all well-rounded tight ends. So, and he comes in with a system where he likes to use tight ends. We can all help each other out, whether it's packages or someone needs a breather or anything of that nature. And i mean i've just even going over the year i mean i'm even more excited going into this year um just uh installing stuff and seeing kind of you can kind of see like

some of their ideas and plans and um i don't have any really excited for year three well yeah i think if you're a tight end then this is like the offense for you before i let you go tyler um this podcast in particular we love to really go you know deep dive into footbally football things so i want you to break down something for me that you think is like one of the more challenging things for a tight end so i'll leave it open if it's blocking a defensive end if it's running a double move down the field, and then explain why it is high-level difficult. Oh, that's a tough question. So the stuff I feel most comfortable with has to tie in is route running.

I mean, I haven't had a ton of opportunities to do it so far in my NFL career, but I'm excited when the opportunity does come because that's where I feel most comfortable is running around, catching the ball. But the most difficult thing probably for me is probably, you know, you got to start it long, you're in protection, you got Ron Miller, you know, explosive pass at the end that's lined up in a wide nine technique. And I mean, that's just a hard angle. I mean, for me, a lot of times when I get to my third, I want to turn my body completely and maybe try to warm or something

when I feel it instead of kind of, you know, staying square and slowly kind of kicking back, even though it's hard to kind of kick back from a square stance. That's probably one of the most difficult things so far because half goal is not something that's major in as a tight end. I mean, you're not always in pass play 100 minutes a a time you might not be in it at all in the game you might be in it a lot in the game and uh i mean there might be just a crucial third down where you got to be in there and man up and make a key block so i think that's uh a really difficult

thing about being the tight end was there someone you blocked where you were kind of like this is actually sort of cool that i blocked this person um because you know the amount of edge rushers in the league right now that are great i mean there are what two dozen who you would almost put under the elite or extremely extremely dangerous type of category yeah they're all freak athletes and i mean i think it wasn't pass pro but i think the dallas game uh i think i played 30 plus maps in the Dallas game. It was a huge game for us at that point in the season. I thought I had a really good run-back game against the Marcus Lawrence, and

some of their front wasn't really good front. That's probably the game I wanted to play, or that kind of stuck out to me throughout that game. I think I played really well in the run game. Well, any time you can run 10 straight times and score a touchdown against a team,

you know that there is probably a fullback who did something right, a couple of tight ends who did something right. That was a really unique drive that you don't see very often in 2019 to be able to do that. And obviously you played a huge role in that game. So, Tyler, it has been extremely cool to catch up with you, get the background story. At some point, we'll shoot some hoops together and I'll show you off the jumper from downtown. I have no other talents, by the way. It's just this, athletically. It's just this one thing. It's like a circus trick. I can shoot lots of threes, nothing else. So I'm sure you're much better at all the other parts of basketball. But a very, very cool background story. I mean, there are some guys who are the best high school player in their state

and are top draft picks and everything else and work their way up to the NFL, and you have a very different and unique route, and I think that's awesome. Yeah, I appreciate it, and thanks for having me. But if we have that contest, you're going to have to hit 30 this time. All right. Okay, we're trash-talking hit 30 this time. All right. Okay. We're trash talking already. I will be prepared for that. Thank you.