Green Bay, Wis. Forget everything you thought you knew about how players got into the NFL. A pair of Green Bay Packers rookies prove it.
First-round pick Lucas Van Ness didn’t start as a Hercules tackle, and Luke Musgrave’s second-round pick wasn’t always a smooth tight end.
Before they wore shoulder pads, they wore snowboarders and skates.
You don’t have to just imagine what a 6-foot-5 Van Ness looks like on a rink.
There is a video guide:
And lest you think skiing wasn’t good before soccer for Musgrave, who comes from a soccer family, ask his mom—a former member of the U.S. Developmental Ski Team as a teenager.
“As a two-year-old, I put him on skis, and at five, he started racing,” Amy Musgrave recalled. “Pop Warner didn’t start until the age of seven.”
And these were not just hobbies.
were lifestyles.
Van Ness played hockey all the way through his senior year of high school and was a key member of the 2019-20 Barrington (Illinois) club hockey team that reached the state semifinals before the COVID-19 pandemic canceled the rest of the season.
Musgrave was still entering downhill racing as his sophomore year of high school in Bend, Oregon.
Packers General Manager Brian Gutkunst thought about it but couldn’t come up with an answer.
When asked if he had discovered a player with a hockey background, he said, “I’d have to go back and kind of look through things to see if there were any hockey players.”
For hockey player Van Ness, fitness was his game, and he collected penalty minutes to prove it, although he believes it was more due to his size – he’s estimated to stand 6-8 on skates – than anything else. outrageous.
“Honestly, a lot of it was unfair, I think,” Van Ness said.
“I always thought I was a very clean player, but unfortunately because of my size and the physique I played with and [smaller-sized] The guys on the other side of him, the referees didn’t like him very much.”
Van Ness wasn’t serious about football until late in middle school, and when he got to high school, Barrington coach Joe Sanchez kept him on a traditional developmental path.
As a freshman, he played on the freshman team.
As a sophomore, he was on the sophomore team.
He did not play early varsity until his freshman year.
“It wasn’t for lack of talent – he was big, tall, tall and athletic,” said Sanchez. “I think it was a blessing because he got the chance to continue learning the game but also with his friends.
“And that friend part, you can’t underestimate it. I think a lot of that is what kept Lucas in football and maybe he wouldn’t just choose to focus on hockey because so many of his close friends were playing football.”
Sanchez was not okay with Van Ness continuing to play hockey, and even encouraged him.
“We had boys who played soccer and hockey, but they weren’t match guys,” Sanchez said. “They were defensive backs, great running backs, linebackers. But not a lineman, nor anyone of that size.”
And he kept growing.
“He wasn’t in the weight room as often as he could have been, which is understandable, because he was a two-sport athlete,” Sanchez said.
Because of his late start to football, Van Ness’ early scholarship offers were from smaller Ivy League and Division I programs until he went to camp at Lindenwood University in St. Louis during the summers between his junior and senior years.
Then the big schools came calling, and Van Ness chose Iowa.
But he wasn’t quite done with hockey yet, and the Iowa coaches were fine with that, even if it was a combination of the two sports that was foreign to them.
“Through that process and sitting with all these coaches and interviews, they said I was one of the first people they ever came across who played hockey and football growing up,” Van Ness said.
Van Ness hasn’t taken up skateboarding since high school, but to this day, he believes it was crucial to his football’s development.
“I saw a lot of translatable qualities and skills [from] Football Hockey.” “My speed, my balance, the speed of the sport, my conditioning, my motor, the ability to change directions. Hockey is a fringe sport, where you have to look at the puck while playing. It all translated directly into my soccer game, helping me to be quick on my feet, to be nimble, to react to what I saw and react to the blocks.
“I really think I wouldn’t be the player without hockey. But ever since I started playing this game of football, I fell in love, and I knew that’s what I wanted to do.”
Although he never started a single game at Iowa, he thrived to the point where he left after playing only two seasons after a redshirt freshman year. At 272 pounds, he recorded 13.5 sacks of 19.5 tackles for loss over those two seasons and earned the nickname “Hercules” along the way.
It was enough for Gutekunst to use the 13th overall pick on him. In the latest OTA open practice, Van Ness has not only moved into the No. 1 defensive position, but has also been showing off his speed and powerful passing movements.
Here’s why Musgrave’s perfect location and team might be:
“I always told Luke,” his mother Amy explained, “You always tend to perform when the weather’s worse. It’s blowing, it’s snowing sideways, and it’s snowing cold out there today, so it must be a good day, because you always tend to do it in these conditions.”
Except she wasn’t talking about football.
“Up there” means the top of the mountain.
Amy, who was born in nearby Kenosha, Wisconsin, grew up on a mountain after her family moved west during her childhood. She quickly transitioned into downhill skiing and made it a step or two away from competing for the Olympic team in the 1980s and early 1990s. Among her contemporaries in skateboarding was the gold medalist Peekaboo Street.
She said, “I was a mother of two boys, and I knew they would probably play football because I was married into a football family.”
Her husband, Doug, played quarterback at Oregon in the early 1990s. Doug’s brother, Bill, is a football pro – NFL backup quarterback and longtime coach who is currently serving as a senior offensive assistant for the Cleveland Browns.
“My point to Doug was about skateboarding, you can start them at a young age,” said Amy. “And if they’re going to play soccer, I’ll tell you something: What will give ski races are big, strong quads, strong low backs, and really good sits.”
Both Luke and his brother, Colt, have become competitive ski racers. They’ve had success – it’s never reached their mother’s level, but they probably could have if football hadn’t taken over.
“I think I’ve come a long way,” Luke said of skating. “as much as I can.”
By his sophomore year of high school, he had given up skiing.
But that wasn’t because of football.
The ski season has begun to overlap with lacrosse.
“The nice thing is, soccer is a clean break from the fall sport to transition into ski racing,” said Amy. “But ski racing, the season starts out long and all the things you work for throughout the season — all the nationals and major events — were in March.
And Luke is like, ‘I can’t do that. I did it. I tick the boxes, but I have a responsibility to the lacrosse team and I can’t start the season when it does. So walk away.”
He stayed near his home to play football at Oregon State. Despite missing most of the 2022 season with a knee injury, Musgrave’s size (6-6, 253) and velocity (4.61 in 40 combined) helped his stock grow, and the Packers selected him in the second round at no. . 42 overall. So far in the OTAs, he’s been a popular target for freshman quarterback Jordan Love.
He doesn’t think much of skating these days—he hasn’t broken up with his hookups since his sophomore year of high school—but, like Van Ness with hockey, he thinks it’s part of his soccer success.
“If you’ve ever skied, it’s kind of a quad torch,” he said. “So I attribute to it the strength of my legs a little bit, kind of being able to stick my hips into the routes and out of breaks. I really think ski racing has helped me.”
And his cold-weather expertise will come in handy this winter at Lambeau Field.
“We’ve seen all those cold snow games on TV,” said Amy. “It should be perfect for him.”