Watkins: Inside the master plan to make Leighton Vander Esch a Cowboy

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[h=1]Calvin Watkins Dec 12, 2018[/h] The​ master​ plan came together​ at The Star. It was​ New Year’s Eve and Leighton Vander Esch was having​​ dinner at the Cowboys Club, a members-only restaurant overlooking the two outdoor Cowboys practice fields. There is also a Quarterback Club hidden on the back end of the club where you can watch practice in the indoor Ford Center facility.

That is where Vander Esch, a now-22-year old from Riggins, Idaho was getting his gameplan.

He sat with a group of five people that consisted of his parents, fiancee, agent and his dad’s hunting buddy.

Vander Esch wanted to get drafted by the Cowboys but knew his path to Dallas was far from guaranteed. The NFL draft is as unpredictable as the stock market. Just when you think a player will land somewhere, a team scoops him up earlier — or he falls 20 spots. Draft boards are complex puzzles which teams start constructing at the end of bowl season and adjust all through Draft Night, when the answers are finally revealed. The Cowboys had the 19th overall pick, and a team with holes to fill. The team needed wide receivers, safeties, linebackers, and offensive linemen. (Jason Witten had not yet retired, pushing tight end up the list of needs.)

But here was Vander Esch, looking at the pictures of Cowboys greats hung throughout The Star, knowing he belonged.

Vander Esch walked around the Cowboys Club understanding that his moment was coming.

“Then again, you get to know the Cowboys are bigger, that’s just part of it,” Vander Esch said. “That’s the special thing about ending up in a place like this.”

The Cowboys eventually got their man. He’s become a candidate for the NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year award and risen as a leader for a young defense that’s among the league’s best.

Taking Vander Esch at No. 19 took luck, a little skill and the belief he could play. It also was the product of insight from Cowboys VP of Personnel Will McClay, Vander Esch’s agent Ron Slavin, and —yes, Vander Esch himself, who delivered in numerous offseason workouts.

The process kicked off when Vander Esch signed with Slavin’s agency. Slavin had moved to Southlake, a suburb of Dallas, and developed strong relationships with the Cowboys, with whom he had a client — former cornerback Orlando Scandrick.

Vander Esch and his family were having dinner that New Year’s Eve after he signed, watching college football games and discussing the plan with the man who put things in motion.

“I told him he was a top-20 pick,” Slavin said. “This is where we need to be for a bunch of different reasons. It was a great place for him to come, I didn’t know at the time Jason Witten was going to retire but I always had in the back of my mind if he comes to the Cowboys he could be like that guy in Witten.”

After dinner, Vander Esch would fly to Phoenix to begin preparations for the combine and NFL team workouts.

On Jan. 5, Slavin arranged a phone call with Cowboys linebackers coach Ben Bloom.

“Pretty early on he was on my list of guys to interview at the combine,” Bloom said. “Do cutups and interact with him. When I had some exposure with the cutups and I watched him I said, ‘This guy fits our scheme and what we do.”

During the discussion, Bloom would go over the Cowboys defense. He discussed what the strong-side linebacker and weak-side backer would do in certain situations. He talked about the different calls a linebacker makes and the adjustments that come with facing fast-paced NFL offenses. Sean Lee was the Cowboys’ weak-side linebacker and the leader of the defense.

It was clear if the Cowboys were going to draft Vander Esch, he would be trained to eventually fill Lee’s substantial shoes.

Lee was a 2010 second-round pick from Penn State and was slated to become the next great linebacker from Linebacker U. Injuries hampered his career. He’s never played a full 16-game season, and in 2017 played in 11. He has only participated in five this season due to hamstring injuries.

Yet Lee remained a crucial component of the Cowboys’ defense. He has earned the respect of his teammates as a two-time Pro Bowler.

Lee learned the game from Keith Brooking and Bradie James, veteran linebackers who were ahead of him on the depth chart when he entered the league in 2010. And Lee, sensing his career or time with the Cowboys had a shelf life, did his homework like he always does.

“I always try to watch film of some of the new guys coming out and seeing how these young guys are and checking it out,” Lee said. “As the old guy, you always looking at the new guys coming in and what you got to compete with.”

The Cowboys met with Vander Esch at the National Scouting Combine in Indianapolis. They liked his size and the athletic ability he showed in making plays sideline-to-sideline. He had a high football IQ and the game didn’t seem too big for him.

When Vander Esch met with the Cowboys coaches, scouts and front office personnel, they already figured he was a fit for their defense.

So what was there to talk about?

Hunting and fishing. Vander Esch and his father hunted wolves in Alaska and in Idaho. There was a picture of Vander Esch holding a wolf from a hunting trip in Alaska with his dad. He showed this picture to the coaches.



It impressed another hunter in the Cowboys organization.

“I hunt, too. I love it,” said Stephen Jones, the Cowboys executive vice president. “I think it’s a good thing. It’s getting away from trouble when you’re out in the woods hunting. I take my son and it was obviously taken very positively (by the Cowboys). He grew up hunting and he was a fisherman and a hunter, His father was an outfitter, that’s what he did for a living. In my mind, I think in everybody else’s, it was a big plus for Leighton.”

The Cowboys have a bus. It’s driven to places like Oxnard, Calif., Mobile, Alabama, Indianapolis and other locations where Jerry Jones needs it. Business happens in this bus. At the combine in Indianapolis, Slavin was making his pitch to Stephen Jones.

Take Vander Esch.

“I knew a lot about him from Will,” Stephen Jones said. “Our guys spotted him a lot earlier (than the combine). He was a guy that was kind of a riser. People take him for a second-or-third type of rounds and the more he worked out and the more he did in Indy, the more we watched him, the more his stock went up.”

Slavin was conducting business with the Cowboys. It was time for the team to let Scandrick go so he could find another team, so Slavin was working on making that happen. He also wanted to speak about other clients in free agency. But he had this linebacker that played eight-man high school football in Riggins and became a star at Boise State who wanted to play for the Cowboys.

“This is a future Cowboy,” Slavin said to Jones. “And that’s Will McClay saying this too. I said he’s not going to be a sleeper, he’s going to be a first-round pick and Stephen kinda chuckled and said, ‘I’m excited to see him.’ ”

With the combine over, Bloom was sent to Boise, Idaho to conduct a private workout with Vander Esch. Bloom was to put Vander Esch through the standard linebacker drills. He arrived on campus during spring break with few people on campus. Bloom needed some help. He normally asks someone from the film department at a college to help tape the workout. Bloom will use an iPad or sometimes the school’s equipment for the workout. With spring break underway, Bloom had to improvise.

“Leighton’s dad (Darwin) was the only guy around and filmed it on my iPad and I was thankful he did because the workout was impressive,” Bloom said. “The drills we did in the workout are very similar to the drills we do in individual (with the Cowboys) and that’s the point. We do the stuff that we do and if I work on multiple people doing the same drills, it’s the same process Coach (Rod) Marinelli does with his D-Line and linebackers. Then it’s something you can compare and he stood out. Any reservation anybody had about him, I think it was confirmed from an athletic standpoint in that workout in terms of change of direction. His dad filmed it, then I had something to show Will McClay, coach (Jason) Garrett, Coach Marinelli and Coach (Kris) Richard.”

NFL teams are allowed 30 visits with college prospects and this is where Vander Esch needed to excel.

He arrived at The Star with 29 other prospects. The visits are relatively simple; meet the coaches, scouts, and personnel people, then tour the facility. The interview component, however, is much longer than the one at the combine. Of the 30 players in attendance, Vander Esch was the first to meet with Jerry Jones.

“Yeah, but I didn’t try to get caught up too much into that stuff cause you never know what’s going to happen,” Vander Esch said. “Just enjoying the moment, an opportunity to talk to Jerry Jones doesn’t come very often and (I) better make the most of it while it lasts.”

During the visit, Vander Esch met Witten and looked out on the practice fields, where he saw Lee working out alone.

After the workout, Lee came in and chatted with Vander Esch for 15 minutes.

“I knew he was one of the higher-ranked guys,” Lee said of Vander Esch. “I watched a little film on him (and) you could tell from the film how good of an athlete he was and the type of football player he was and I met him on the 30 visits. He’s a great guy, you could tell right off the bat and (we) spent the spring with him and stuff. You knew he was a great guy and he was going to be a great football player.”

All that was left was Draft Night.

Within the draft’s first round, the Cowboys were also interested in safety Derwin James and defensive tackle Vita Vea. Dallas liked two wide receivers early: Calvin Ridley and DJ Moore. But the team considered both to be second-round players. The Cowboys weren’t going to use a first-round pick on a wide receiver unless he was a No. 1. Ridley and Moore were viewed as No. 2 receivers.

“It’s hard, you got to be realistic,” Stephen Jones said. “You pretty much put your hands around it not always knowing what’s going to be realistic. There are a group of players that are probably going to be gone; (but) 10 of them you know you’re going to get, so you have them on your wish list. So you really zero in on the realistic opportunities. That doesn’t mean you don’t do the work on the others, in case they fall and that’s why the board is put up accordingly.”

Bloom sat nervously in his office at The Star. Jones sat anxiously in the team’s war room. Slavin stared at his phone.

As the first round progressed, Slavin considered that somebody would take Vander Esch before Dallas. Tennessee was picking No. 22 and he thought they might move up.

Vander Esch wasn’t sure what was going to happen.

“Absolutely, especially not in the first round,” he said. “Felt like so many different things happen on draft day. You never know where you will end up. I was just keeping my fingers crossed that I ended up here. It’s a family atmosphere here, they take care of each other — there is no better place.”

The Chargers took James, the safety from Florida State, at No. 17. Green Bay traded up with Seattle to get cornerback Jaire Alexander at No. 18. When that happened, Slavin received a text message from Cowboys College Scouting coordinator Chris Hall: “Will McClay is on the phone with Leighton, we’re on the clock.”

Vander Esch was a Cowboy.

“Every single step of the way has been perfect,” Vander Esch said. “It’s been amazing; I couldn’t ask for anything more.”



Vander Esch has been one of the top players on a Dallas defense that has led this team to a two-game lead of first place in the NFC East with three games remaining.

He’s taken over the starting job from an injured Lee, though Jerry Jones expects the veteran to regain his starting job when he returns.

From the first dinner with his agent to the private workouts with Bloom, through being the first of the college prospects to meet with Jerry Jones, everything went according to plan.

“He was like ‘this is where you’re going to be,'” Vander Esch said of his dinner with Slavin. “I was like ‘yeah, I agree with you on that one.’ It was just cool sitting here a few months down the road after training and everything and putting the hard work in the draft process that I would end up here.”
 
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