Waiting in the NFL draft green room,
Ryan Tollner, agent for quarterbacks
Jared Goff and
Carson Wentz, prepared them for the strong probability that Goff would go first to the Los Angeles Rams and Wentz second to the Philadelphia Eagles.
“By the time we were standing there waiting for the call, I was probably 99 percent sure it was going to happen,” Tollner said of the Rams’ picking Cal quarterback Goff. “But, you know, there was always that 1 percent chance something crazy could happen.”
It turned out Tollner was right, but that didn’t make the wait completely painless. The Rams took the full 10 minutes on the clock before picking Goff.
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The Rep 1 family — Nima Zarrabi, Chase Callahan, Bruce Tollner and Ryan Tollner — with top draft pick Jared Goff.
Photo by: COURTESY OF REP 1 SPORTS
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Both Goff and Wentz, from North Dakota State, sat at their adjacent tables, looking at their phones. Tollner and his colleagues from
Rep 1 Sports — his cousin
Bruce Tollner, NFL agent Chase Callahan and marketing agent
Nima Zarrabi — stood nearby.
Inside the green room April 28 in Chicago, agents’ and players’ eyes were on NFL Network’s coverage of the Rams’ draft room in Los Angeles. “We were all kind of watching them, and they weren’t really doing anything,” Tollner said.
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Rep 1 client and No. 2 overall pick Carson Wentz with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.
Photo by: GETTY IMAGES
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He had told the players that the Rams’ call would come from the 213 area code, and that call did come — from Rams general manager Les Snead to Goff.
Several minutes later Howie Roseman, the Eagles’ executive vice president of football operations and general manager, called Wentz. “As far as the Eagles, they got exactly who they wanted with the 2 pick,” Tollner said.
Tollner said the Eagles did not specifically tell him they favored Wentz over Goff. “But I know they made the trade with the expectation that they were getting Carson,” Tollner said. “That was another thing that factored into me knowing what was going to happen — Philadelphia was completely sure that they were getting Carson Wentz.”
Draft night was the end of a wild ride that started four months earlier, when the Tollners and Callahan signed both quarterbacks, and ended with Rep 1 Sports becoming the first agency since CAA Sports in 2009 to represent the top two picks in the draft.
Originally, Goff was hoping to be a top-15 pick and Wentz, who played at an NCAA Division I FCS school, was just hoping to be drafted in the first round, Tollner said.
But the two quarterbacks generated interest early, and Tollner said having both of them gave the agents “a distinct advantage” in knowing the market for both players.
“I think it was early February when [Cleveland Browns coach] Hue Jackson called me and said, ‘Hey, we are drafting one of your two quarterbacks and I’m not going to hide the fact I love Jared Goff,’” Tollner said. Tollner’s relationship with Jackson goes back about 20 years; Jackson coached Tollner when he played quarterback at Cal.
“Cleveland [at that time] was at the two pick, so we were able to tell any team that said they absolutely had to have one of the two quarterbacks, ‘Well, you’re going to have to get to the very first pick.’”
Multiple teams were interested, Tollner said.
Weeks before the Rams secured the No. 1 pick with a blockbuster trade, they conducted secret workouts with both Goff at Cal and Wentz at North Dakota State.
As the draft status of the two quarterbacks rose, rival agents and some in the media said it was a conflict for one agency to represent both players. But Tollner said he told both quarterbacks during the recruiting process — Wentz was a senior and Goff was a junior — that the agency was recruiting both of them and had a good chance at signing the other.
“That’s where maybe some other agents have gone wrong in recruiting players at the same position,” Tollner said. “They were not honest about it. In our case, we were completely honest.”
As it worked out, everyone was happy — the clubs, the players and the agents. At the end of draft night, everyone was taking photos, and Tollner said he took one with his wife. “We just realized it is so hard to do and so unlikely to ever happen again,” Tollner said.
Rep 1 Sports represents both quarterbacks off the field as well. Goff and Wentz both have endorsement deals with Nike, Bose and trading card companies Panini and Leaf. Goff had a suit deal with Giorgio Armani and Gillette. Wentz had a deal with the Strahan Collection of suits that are sold exclusively at J.C. Penney and with Scheels All Sports, a Fargo, N.D.-based sporting goods retail chain.
Now that they have both been drafted, both quarterbacks want to take their time before committing to long-term endorsement deals, Zarrabi said. “They just want to focus on their playbook and getting to know their teammates.”
> STEINBERG BACK IN ROUND ONE: When the Denver Broncos selected Memphis quarterback Paxton Lynch with the No. 26 pick, it was the first first-round pick for veteran agent Leigh Steinberg since 2004.
“If I, in my wildest dreams, had to design the best spot for him it would have been Denver,” Steinberg said, who called the franchise a perennial winner with the best defense in the league.
“John Elway has proved to be as brilliant an executive as he was a quarterback,” Steinberg said.
After Goff and Wentz, Lynch was the only quarterback taken in the first round, and he was selected after some members of the national media were predicting he would fall out of the first round.
“There is nothing like draft night for pure tension, anxiety, followed by joy and ecstasy,” Steinberg said.
Steinberg was out of the agent business from about 2007 until 2013, when he restarted Steinberg Sports and Entertainment. He represents Lynch with Chris Cabott.
On being back in the first round, Steinberg said, “It was wonderful. It was joyous.”
Liz Mullen can be reached at lmullen@sportsbusinessjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter @SBJLizMullen.
