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Zach Sieler – December 26, 2019 Download PDF version

Thursday, December 26, 2019

DT Zach Sieler

(When did you start to see doors open in the NFL for you?) – “Probably my breakout year (as a junior). That year I had 19-and-a-half sacks. For me, that was always there. But when that happened it was kind of like, ‘Alright, now we can really start rolling and working on things’ after that.”

(Any team take you for a pre-draft visit?) – “Yeah, I think I had eight pre-draft visits.”

(Okay. Not here though?) – “No, sir.”

(I was going to ask you if the Patriots were one of the eight.) – “No.”

(How did you wind up at Ferris State?) – “For my degree. I went there – I was a walk on, so I went there for mechanical engineering. We had a family cabin up there, so I knew the area little bit. It’s about two-and-a-half hours away from home, so I could still be home on the weekends if I’d like to in the offseason. (It was a) good fit for me.”

(Are you thinking an NFL career as a possibility at that point?) – “It was always (on) my mind; but for me, I was a mechanical engineer and then football was my passion, so I was doing that and hoping to get as far as I can, but I was still doing my classes and graduating (with) my degree.”

(When did you start thinking that the NFL was realistic?) – “For me, it was always there. But when other people talked about that kind of stuff – if that’s what you’re asking – was the year I had my breakout year. (As a junior I had) 19-and-a-half sacks, 30-something TFLs and I think it was 70 or 80 tackles or something like that. After that year it was kind of like, ‘Let’s start getting into this and working for this.’”

(When you look back at the game Sunday, which I believe was your first NFL start, was it not?) – “Mhm.”

(And first career sack. I don’t know if I want to say it’s a culmination of all the hard work and all that and a dream becoming a reality.) – “Every day up until this point, even today at practice, it’s a culmination of everything I’ve done beforehand. You learn, you improve and you watch and you just keep working in your craft.”

(So what were you thinking as Sunday was going along? Because I remember I was like, you made a play and just I kept noticing you, which is always good for a defensive lineman. So what was it like inside for you?) – “For me, it’s just the next play. You don’t want to – If you have a bad play, you don’t want to keep honing in on a bad play and thinking that in the back of your head, so that’s how I treat them. You want to treat the good plays as, ‘Yeah that was great, but you’ve got to move onto the next one.’ That last play doesn’t affect the next play. Just like a bad play doesn’t affect the next play. You’ve just got to move on and keep playing each snap.”

(So you didn’t feel like, “Hey, I’m on a roll today,” or something like that?) – “You feel good, but I try not to think about that during the game at least. I want to just work on the next snap and keep working and read your keys and do your job. That’s ultimately all you can do. Yeah, you’re making great plays; but you can make a bad play and that’s going to make everything worse. It doesn’t matter what happened before, it’s what’s happening that snap. That’s the way I like to think of things and then after you can review and learn and go from there.”

(What happened on the snap where you got the sack?) – “It was a play-action, the guard fanned out and I hit the gap under him and got to (Andy) Dalton. It felt good.”

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