University of North Carolina Athletics
THB Exclusive: Hilton NFL Draft Preparation
January 13, 2003 | Football
Jan. 13, 2003
In the first of an exclusive series, TarHeelBlue.com takes you inside the NFL Draft preparation of Carolina tight end Zach Hilton. The senior, who caught 19 passes for 258 yards one touchdown during the 2002 season, is widely considered one of the top tight ends available in the 2003 draft pool.
by Adam Lucas
Zach Hilton is like any freshly-graduated senior these days. The Tar Heel tight end got his degree in history in December, and he's spending the month of January preparing for job interviews and showcasing his abilities for prospective employers.
Instead of going to job fairs or power lunches, however, Hilton is trying to create positive buzz for the NFL Draft by playing in senior showcase games like the East-West Shrine Game this past Saturday in San Francisco, where he caught three passes in front of an appreciative audience of NFL scouts.
By the end of the 2002 season, Hilton had dropped to 255 pounds. After taking two weeks off at the end of the season, he has since bulked back up to 265 in an effort to make himself more marketable to pro scouts. Prior to leaving for San Francisco last week, he was doing daily workouts with high school teammate Chas Gessner, a second-team Associated Press All-American at wide receiver for Brown University.
"He set all kinds of records at Brown," Hilton says. "He had like 25 catches in one game, and he's kind of in the same boat I am as far as getting ready for the draft. I usually go in the morning and do some stuff with catching and lifting weights for about three to four hours, and then I'll come back in the afternoon and run for about an hour and a half."
Hilton still uses the conditioning program implemented by Jeff Connors at Carolina, and he'll leave later this week for the Fischer Sports Training facility in Phoenix, where he will focus for nearly a month on both physical and mental drills that are specific to the NFL Combine, which will be held on February 18-24 in Indianapolis. The combine is a virtual meat (and meet) market at which NFL teams put approximately 270 college players through their paces in a variety of drills and interviews. Players have to be invited--Hilton called receiving his invitation in the mail just before Christmas a "nice little extra present"--and good performances have been known to boost a player's stock by multiple rounds; bad performances can make a former draft contender into a pretender.
After training at Fischer for two weeks, Hilton will leave for Hawaii, where he will compete in the Hula Bowl on February 1 on a team coached by University of Miami coach Larry Coker. He will then return to Phoenix for two more weeks of combine preparation before heading home for a brief rest before jetting off to Indianapolis.
It's a high-flying schedule with rigorous requirements, but it can also be fun. During the week before the East-West game, Hilton got to know players he had previously only seen on television such as Miami's Ken Dorsey and Ohio State's Michael Doss.
He even pulled the unthinkable--he landed a North Carolina logo on a North Carolina State helmet. Hilton and Wolfpack senior Shawn Price got to know each other during game week, when it is traditional for players to swap school logo stickers to wear on their helmets. Hilton provided Price with a huge interlocking "NC" logo, which Price promptly stuck prominently on the top of his helmet. According to Hilton, Price had "run out" of State logos, which left Hilton's helmet Pack-less.
In addition to getting physically prepared for the NFL Draft over the past month, Hilton also had to make another set of adjustments, as he had to select an agent. The process of picking a representative is much like the college recruiting process, with some agents flying players to their facilities and others making in-home visits with presentations galore.
"It was an interesting process," Hilton says. "It was tough making a choice, because I had some good options. You develop relationships and you don't want to tell those people that you aren't going with them. But I went with who I was most comfortable with."
Hilton eventually signed with Harold Lewis and the National Sports Agency in St. Louis. Check back on TarHeelBlue.com in the weeks to come for more on Hilton's draft preparation.
| NFL Draft-meter: "Right now we're hearing everything from the third round to the sixth round," Hilton says. "It's tough to tell right now because a lot of teams want to wait and see how you do at workouts. I'm hoping to take advantage of my opportunities and get it more towards the third than the sixth." |
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly and can be reached at alucas@tarheelmonthly.com. To subscribe to Tar Heel Monthly, click here.
