Brenton Strange, Former Penn State Tight End

We continue this exact Yelp show coast to coast on CBS Sports Radio. It's a Penn State invasion right now. My producer Hot Take Kick, he always wears his Penn State gear each and every day on the other side of the glass. But now joining us is actually someone that contributed something to that fine institution, and that is Bretton Strange, who was an NFL Draft prospect, and we're less than a month until the NFL Draft gets underway. And I'm seeing right now Bretton, who joins us in studio, you got him mocked in the second round, some pretty neat stuff.

Yeah, very cool. Yeah, blessed to be in this position. It's kind of surreal just to be here. All the hard work though, it's paying off. And then once I get there, it's time to work even more. Is it crazy how quickly this journey has gone?

You get to Penn State, and now in three weeks, you're going to be hearing your name called at the NFL Draft. It's honestly unreal. Like yesterday, I was just thinking about it a little bit, and I just remember like driving with my mom for the last time, like getting dropped off at Penn State as a freshman.

And that just seems like not long ago at all. So it's crazy to think about like how fast everything went, but it was amazing there. I had the best experience at Penn State for sure. What did you expect when you committed to Penn State, when you get dropped off freshman year, it's like, goodbye mom, I'm going to do my thing at college. What were your expectations? My expectations were high for sure.

They've always been high for myself. I hold myself to a high standard, but I didn't know what I was getting into. I didn't know what the college life was. I didn't know how to adjust in the beginning, but once I got through that, everything was easy. I had some great vets in the room. I had great coaches to help me transition.

So everything was real easy, but I didn't know what I was getting into at all. I've been to Penn State a few times, and I didn't know what I was getting into either. Then you get dropped off at that Penn State creamer, you get some ice cream, that's delicious, and then we asked this to every Penn State guest. Have you ever been to Are You Hungry, the sandwich shop on campus? And some of those sandwiches, man, they could give you a heart attack. Excuse my language, everyone, but I got a fat bitch at Are You Hungry, which was steak, if I can remember this correctly, chicken fingers, and then moz sticks on a sandwich, and fries as well.

Oh, disgusting looking back at it. I don't know how I'm still here to this day. I'm assuming that if you went to Are You Hungry too many times, probably James Franklin would be moving you to tackle or something. Yeah, I didn't go to Are You Hungry too many times. I visited a couple times my freshman year, but your favorite sandwich was mine too.

Just don't tell the NFL draft evaluators. How was the combine experience, by the way? It was amazing. I still look back on it, and it just seems fake almost, going back and then looking at the videos and stuff, like the gauntlet drill that we did, and then there's a couple more videos of me out there, but it just looks unreal. That's just dreams coming true, and it's just awesome to be in this position and in this process and just going through everything.

Been dreaming about this since I was a kid, so it's just amazing. I like the NFL draft because clearly you get players like you that start your new journey, your professional journey, but the process does get a little ridiculous at times. The combine, like you said, it doesn't even seem real at times, but then I feel as if they put too much emphasis on the combine. They don't look at the three, four years of tape that you were putting on.

Yeah. Some guys, they go out there and they blow the combine up, but at the end of the day, it's all football. I feel like I've had a lot of great tapes, so I'm not really worried about that, and I put up solid numbers at the combine, but at the end of the day, we still play football. It's not track. It's not any of the just running out there in tights, wearing pads. It's a physical sport, and you're running everything on air.

You're not doing any true blocking, so you go back and you look at my tape. I'm perfectly fine with that, but sometimes they get a little too overexcited about the guys that put up the crazy numbers, but congrats to them, and hopefully they do it on the field too. Well, the dumb part to me is last year it was Kenny Pickett. Oh, he has small hands. He's not going to be a good quarterback, or Bryce Young.

He was great at Alabama for an on watch, but he's too short to be an NFL quarterback. It's things like that, and you never know where the information is coming from. Things being said so a player could fall, so a team could get them, but that part of the process is you see a guy that plays so well, and then all of a sudden, oh, his hands are this small, or no crap. Bryce Young isn't the tallest guy in the world. That's what bugs me. Yeah, I never understood that either. You see Bryce Young, Kenny Pickett. They had great college careers, and then guys try to doubt them just because they're small or they have small hands.

It makes no sense. At the end of the day, football is football, and definitely those guys showed enough in their college careers to stamp where they are at now, so it's kind of honestly disrespectful, but I'm sure that those guys play with a chip on their shoulder and go hard because of it. Brennan Strange here with us. So you look back at this season for Penn State. It was bizarre because when you have a player in the locker room like Drew Aller who a lot of fans are excited to see, naturally the fan base goes, when is Drew going to get on the field?

When is Drew going to get on the field? But Sean Clifford, who's been at Penn State forever, he's like the Perry Ellis of football as he was for Kansas basketball. He did a nice job this year for you guys, especially at the end in that Rose Bowl. Yeah, he did a great job this year.

Sean was one of the biggest leaders on our team vocally and on the field too, so Sean did a great job, but going back to with Drew, everyone's journey is different, so if he had to sit out a year and then goes and blows up next year, everyone's journey is different. That's something that Coach Franklin preaches a lot. Everybody goes through different things. Everybody goes through different hardships and at the end, if you keep working hard, you keep your head down.

You'll get to where you want to be. We know we got Michigan. We got Ohio State in the Big Ten and you guys have been that third team. People believe that Drew is just going to take off. What did you see being around Drew? Yeah, I mean everyone's expecting big things for him, but I mean I don't think there's any pressure for him. I think if he just goes out there and bees himself, everything will be cool. He's a great athlete.

He's a great football player and he's a great person too, so I think if he just bees himself, then he'll just be just fine and he'll be a great leader for Penn State football for the coming years. Even though I like to poke fun at Penn State, when you go to that stadium and you see those 100,000 fans screaming, it is really surreal as Brendan Strange joins us. When did it hit you? When was like the holy crap moment?

I can't believe that I'm a part of this. Man, probably the first time we played. My first game at Penn State was Idaho and I'm from West Virginia. I played high school football in West Virginia, but I'd never experienced anything like that.

110,000 people, but I guess even on the recruiting visits in 2018, I went to the to the whiteout. They were playing Ohio State and it was just unreal and at that moment like I knew that I wanted to play on that stage. I wanted to be there and make plays in front of all those people and that's when I knew Penn State just treated football different.

You talked about some people that influenced you earlier. Pat Fryermuth is clearly one of them who's a heck of a tight end and is going to have a long career in the NFL currently with the Steelers. What did he teach you, especially about the tight end position and just also Penn State?

Yeah, Pat, Nick Bowers and all the other dudes that were in the room, they did a great job of helping me out if I had any trouble when I was a freshman. It just taught me how to prepare myself and we did everything together as a tight end unit. It's kind of a tradition at Penn State that the tight ends do everything together, so what Pat taught me, what I taught the young guys now and they're the leaders of the room and they're going to carry that tradition on and on and that's just what makes Penn State tight ends so special. That's why people say, oh Penn State's just growing tight ends.

Nah, we got a tradition there. We have schedule, we have routine, we know what we're doing there, so it's just it's a blessing to be a part of a brotherhood like the Penn State tight ends. We know how big the tight end position is in the NFL and we've seen a guy like Rob Gronkowski, Travis Kelce recently take the lead by storm.

You go back to Gonzalez and Antonio Gates when you look at the last 20 years or so. If people have never seen you play at Penn State, what is an NFL team getting? What type of tight end are you?

They're getting a very versatile physical player. If you've never seen my tape before, I'm used in a lot of positions. Sometimes I go out there and I catch two touchdowns a week. Sometimes I don't catch the ball at all and fans kind of look, they think that's crazy, but that's the beauty of a tight end. You're demanded to be, to do a lot in your offense and you're asked to do a lot, so I was asked to do a lot in Penn State's offense and sometimes I didn't catch a ball in a game.

Sometimes I caught two touchdowns and that's just the beauty of being a tight end. You get that, you get asked to do everything and yeah, versatile player, hard-working player, leader for sure. Who were some of your favorite players growing up as a kid? My favorite players growing up as a kid, I love Marshawn Lynch.

I just love how physical he plays. You talk to the media a little bit more than Marshawn. Yeah, Marshawn, I love that whole Seahawks team, Legion of Boom. Obviously, George Kittle now, he's a great player. Travis Kelce, great player and then I watch a lot of Pat, me and Pat talk a lot, so just guys like that. Steve Smith, talk a lot of smack. I talk a lot of smack when I'm out there, but it's just because I'm passionate about the game, that's all it is. So you big on the celebrations? We don't need to see you get him fined or anything, but I think that's a good part of pro football when you see the celebrations and guys like Kelce just lose their mind in the end zone.

Yeah, that's a part of the game. It's an emotional game and that's what makes the sport so great, is that guys are able to go out there and display their emotions and that's just what makes the game so great. What does James Franklin mean to you? He means a lot to me. He's a big reason why I went to Penn State.

I think that he's the most consistent person I've ever met and it's kind of crazy to say, but I heard him say things that he said my freshman year and he's very consistent. He's a great leader and he's a great player. And he doesn't develop players just on the field. He develops us off the field too. I came in at Penn State as a boy and I honestly to say like he helped me develop off the field into a man. So he's a great person, great leader and I'm thankful he let me be a part of the Penn State family. What did he tell you freshman year that now you look back and you go, wow, he was right on? Oh, a lot of things.

Honestly, it's not just one thing to pinpoint. I think if you live by the, we have core values at Penn State, positive attitude, great work ethic, competing everything you do and must be willing to sacrifice. He told us if you live by those, you'll get whatever you want.

In class, out of class, whatever it is on the football field. So just living by those values every single day and pushing myself no matter how I was feeling. He told me I could get here and I'm here now. So I appreciate him. I appreciate all the staff. They made my Penn State experience unforgettable and it was the best time in my life so far.

So Brandon Strange in studio with us. So many kids grow up and they say they want to be a pro athlete for you. Now less than a month away from that becoming a reality. When was that first time that you actually thought, okay, this is something it's more than what I just say I want to do.

This is something that's going to be realistic for me. I mean, I guess probably before my junior year when I started getting attention from colleges and stuff like that. But that was probably when I knew I could do it. But I've been thinking that I wanted to do this my whole entire life. Ever since I put on the pads, I knew I wanted to be a professional football player. But I don't think I realized the sacrifice, the hard work and all the things that the great ones do to be great.

And that's what I realize now. And I think that's why I am here. I'm a very hard worker and I sacrifice a lot to be the best football player I can be. Why was now the right time to leave Penn State and say, okay, this is the time to start this pro journey? Yes, I'm about to graduate soon. Next year I'll graduate.

I have an internship to do and I'm just ready for it. I'm ready for new challenges. I'm ready to be on that NFL field. And like I said, it's a dream.

Like I've always been trying to attain this, reach this goal. So I'm ready for it. That's the only reason. And you're quickly flying up the draft boards. Matt Miller, second round I saw earlier today, Todd McShea as well. This is what Todd McShea said. I dug into Strange's tape recently and he's one of the most underrated players in this class. Despite mediocre production and combine results, he accelerates really well and can stretch the seam and he's competitive as an inline blocker. Now, some of that was positive.

And then with the draft process, you get a few shots here and there. When you hear someone like Todd McShea that does that for a living, does that matter to you? You don't really focus on that stuff. I don't really focus on outside voices. I just focus on myself each and every day. If I get better every single day, then I know I'm going to be better than the next dude. But it's cool to hear things like that. But I know my process is my process.

And if I keep working hard, I get what I want for sure. Do you think you're the best tight end in this draft class? Yeah, I think I'm the best tight end in this draft class. But I think that each and every guy that's in this draft class should say that they're the best tight end in this draft class because if they don't have that type of confidence, then they're probably not going to be that good of a football player.

100% agree with you. This is a loaded tight end draft class with guys like Dalton Kincaid at Utah and the mayor at Notre Dame. This is a deep draft class at your position. Yeah, a lot of great players. It was cool to go to the combine and meet those dudes that watch them film on or played against. And even past teammates like Zach Kuntz.

It was cool to be around them and just meet them for the first time. What has been some of the feedback you've been getting from NFL teams? Like I said, I'm a versatile piece. I look at football like chess. You're just making a bunch of moves. And a lot of teams like that I play the Y, I play the H, and I play fullback. And they just love how versatile I am.

So that's the feedback that I've been getting. Everyone says I do great in the interviews. I know football.

Penn State prepared me for that. So everyone thinks the process of this stuff is hectic and everything. But at the end of the day, it's just ball. So if you don't love ball, then it might be hectic for you.

But I love ball. So all this stuff is easy. How are you going to be spending this draft process? When draft night comes, you obviously have it on Thursday. If you don't go in the first round, then rounds two and three where you're being projected to go are on Friday just watching it with the family? Yeah, probably just watching it with the fam. I really haven't got that far. I still have a couple more workouts, a couple more visits, Zoom interviews and things of that such.

So when the date gets closer, I'll figure that out. But still got some business to handle. Are there a few teams that have been in contact with you the most? Yeah, a lot of teams. I've talked to basically every NFL team. So a lot of teams have been in contact with me a little bit more, but you don't know what's going to happen. You never do. I just remember when my friend was going through this process, Pat, and he thought a team was going to draft him, but they didn't end up getting them. So you don't know what's going to happen until they call your name.

It's also a fun process, but it's also a little bit of a nervous process because right away you got to pick up and I know it's part of the business. You got to move to a totally different city. You don't know if you're going east coast, west coast, middle of the country. You have no clue where you're going to go. Yeah, that's the crazy part about it. And going back to not knowing where you're going to go, I guess that's what makes you a little anxious about everything because I live on the east coast. If I'm out on the west coast, then it's like, ah man, not near any of my family or anything, but I'm here to play ball.

So that's just how it is. I got to sacrifice some things to be great and I know that. I got to ask you about Will Leviss because we've had him on a few times this year, wrapped up his career at Kentucky, but at first was at Penn State outside of putting mayo in his coffee and some of that bizarre stuff. What is an NFL team getting in Will Leviss? Yeah, first and foremost, he's a great athlete and a great leader. I think to be a good quarterback in the NFL, you have to be a great leader and he has all of those traits that you want and he has a cannon for an arm. He's a great person, great leader and a great athlete.

That's what they're getting. He's going to be big time for sure. Ten years from now, if we're having a conversation again, what does Brennan Strange accomplish in the NFL?

I mean, I'm not sure about that. I think that I'm going to accomplish a lot, but only God knows that. God has my story written already, but I know if I continue to put in the work, I continue to keep my head down, sacrifice, put in the hard work, then I get everything I want and hopefully that's a couple Super Bowls, couple Pro Bowls and be able to set my family up generationally. We see you so much on the field, away from the field. What do you do for fun? What are your hobbies?

What is Brennan Strange like away from the NFL field? Yeah, I got a dog. I spend a lot of time with my dog. What kind of dog? Pitbull, Deebo.

He's soft though. Quicker than Deebo Samuel? Deebo.

He like Deebo from Friday, not Deebo Samuel, but yeah, he's cool. Play a lot of fetch. I love to play video games and honestly just really relax and hang out and chill, spend family time. That's who I am. I'm a real laid back person. Football, that's my life. My life revolves around that.

When I'm not doing football, I just like to relax. Meal-wise, we started this conversation off with food. Ideal meal. What is it for Brennan Strange? Man, so I've been trying to get better with this.

This is something that I need to improve on because in college, sometimes it's late night, you got that homework due. You got to go get that- You eat like a pig. Yeah, you got to go get that McDonald's.

I've been trying to improve my nutrition, so I'm really trying to change my ways and stay away from all the fatty junk foods and all that. No more fat bitches after you're hungry? Yeah, no more. No more. Staying away from them.

I don't know. I like chicken. My probably favorite meal is chicken, baked mac and cheese and yams. Yeah, yams.

You can't go wrong with some good mac and cheese and some good chicken too. Before we let you run, I want to ask you about one more of your teammates, Joey Porter Jr. So much has obviously been documented with his family and then his play as well. What's the team getting with Joey? That's my dog first and foremost, but obviously he's 6'4".

He's very lengthy. He's a physical corner and he's a great one-on-one press corner, zone corner, whatever it is. So our team's getting the full package in Joey Porter and I'm excited to see what he does in the league because I know that he's going to be great. Well, good luck. I really do appreciate you coming on in and we hope to see your name called very early in this upcoming NFL Draft. Appreciate it, sir. Weddings are a celebration of finding the perfect fit. And with Indochino, you can design a custom suit made to your measurements. Go to Indochino.com and use code PODCAST for 10% off any order of $3.99 or more.