Chris Cooley's Draft Day

With the NFL Draft just two weeks from Saturday, I thought it might be interesting to see how some of the guys on the Redskins' roster handled their own draft days. The experiences, I figured, would be pretty varied -- from early-first-round guys like Chris Samuels and LaRon Landry to late-round picks like Chris Horton and undrafted free agents like Byron Westbrook.

But we'll start right in the middle, with Chris Cooley. Cooley was selected by the Redskins in the third round of the 2004 NFL Draft, just about where he was projected to go. This particular conversation started when we were discussing the Redskins Draft Party, with me asking Cooley if he ever watches the draft on TV, and developed from there.

Cooley: "I watched every second of the draft my draft year.

What was it like?

Cooley: "It was horrible! I was gonna play golf the whole day, because I knew I wasn't a first round guy. And that's four hours. So I was gonna play golf and whatever happened, happened.

"It's Logan, Utah: there's three golf courses. The draft was on a Saturday, and there's three tournaments. So I couldn't play there, and I didn't want to go somewhere else because I didn't want to get stuck somewhere else and not be able to get back, because I thought I might be going in the second round.

"So I went home and I sat on my couch and watched 14 hours of draft coverage, and honestly, I turned away at commercials and I never got a single call all day from any team."



Not a single one?

Cooley: "Nothing.

"And we went over to my mom's house later, once the third round started, and I watched every second. But my phone wasn't getting good service, it was bad service in her house. So I went outside to try to get service, because I was like, 'Am I seriously not getting calls or voicemails or anything?'

"And so I went outside, and everyone started cheering. Like, everyone went wild. So before I even got called, the Redskins drafted me.

"And then [my brother] Tanner put Joe Gibbs on hold."

He what?

Cooley: "I guess he was talking to all his friends, and -- I didn't know I'd given teams my mom's home line, and so Joe Gibbs called and he said, 'Hey, is Chris there?'

"And Tanner said, 'Yeah, hold on a minute, man.'"

Did Tanner and Gibbs ever discuss this?

Cooley: "No, Tanner never met Gibbs. Which is crazy, because Tanner and Zorn have talked, what, fifty times?

"So anyway, a few minutes later, Tanner looks at me and goes, 'Oh, some guy's on hold for you.'

"And I say, 'What? Gimme it!' I grab the phone, and this voice says, 'Chris? This is Joe Gibbs. I hope you want to be a Redskin!'"

How long was he on hold?

Cooley: "Three or four minutes. I just looked at Tanner like, 'You bastard.'"

So you never did tell me what you think of the TV broadcast coverage of the draft.

Cooley: "I think the draft's cool. I like that they changed the fifteen minutes of the first round to ten. Everyone likes that."

I imagine that really helps out guys like you who expect to be drafted somewhere around the third round.

Cooley: "Except that they moved the third round to the second day, which I think sucks. It was cool to say that you were a first day guy."

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