University of Tulsa photo

Knowing where Zaven Collins might go in the National Football League draft requires a Ouija board. (People speculate at this time of year, because there is nothing else to do if your job and/or interest is football. I won’t waste my time.) I do know intimately, however, the place Collins is from and the quality of players and people that such places produce. I came from a place much like Collins’ home of Hominy, Oklahoma.

This knowledge of place, if not the person, prompts me to hope the Cleveland Browns chose the University of Tulsa linebacker. Just as they did when they drafted Oklahoma quarterback Baker Mayfield with the first pick in 2018, the Browns could get the best.

Mayfield won the Heisman Trophy. Now he seems to be getting the hang of this NFL quarterback thing. Collins can run like the wind sweeping down the plain and strike with the power of the twisters that has caused his place on earth to be named Tornado Alley. He won the Bronko Nagurski Trophy and the Chuck Bednarik and Lombardi awards and finished runner-up for the Butkus Award that goes to the nation’s best linebacker. Taken cumulatively, this assures Collins is the 2020 National Defensive Player of the Year.

Not bad for a guy who was hardly wanted coming out of high school—and it was not because he couldn’t play. It was, in my opinion, more a result of where he had played. Hominy, though with a rich tradition of producing players who win championships, falls into Oklahoma’s smallest-school division of 11-man football—Class A. Small-school Oklahoma players rarely receive big-time college scholarships so it may come as a surprise to college coaches—including those at Oklahoma and nearby Oklahoma State (55 miles)—that Collins is expected to be the first player from the state drafted.

Hominy, equidistant south of Pawhuska and northwest of Tulsa, is located in Osage County and not far from Nowata, the small town in which I was born and spent the first 16 years of my life, hoping that I would be able to play like Collins. I was a linebacker/running back, after forgetting to grow and could no longer be a single-wing center. That has not been Zaven Collins’ problem: He is a fraction of an inch shy of 6-foot-5 and 260 pounds. When he worked out for NFL teams on April 2 at Tulsa’s Pro Day, he ran the 40-yard dash in 4.67 seconds, had a vertical jump of 35 inches and a broad jump of 10 feet, 2 inches, and bench-pressed 225 pounds 19 times. That’s good for a linebacker, and Collins will get stronger. What’s rare is speed the Browns covet.

While the team has de-emphasized the linebacker position compared to defensive end (get to the quarterback before he can throw the ball), cornerback (cover receivers long enough and well enough to be disruptive) or even the extra safety that defensive coordinator Joe Woods wants to utilize in the slot. Collins can do all this. In Tulsa’s abbreviated 8-game season due to COVID-19, he had as many interceptions (4) as sacks, 11.5 tackles for loss, a forced fumble and a fumble recovery, and a safety. He also did the dramatic: In an overtime victory over Tulane, his 96-yard interception return made the scoreboard light up with the decisive points.

Bucky Brooks, analyst for NFL.com, ranks Collins as the top linebacker in the draft in no small part because of the changed nature of the position. “The NFL’s gradual shift towards position-less football has blurred the lines when it comes to linebackers,” Brooks writes. “Collins is a chameleon at the position . . . a versatile defender capable of aligning between the tackles as a box defender or on the edges as a blitzer/pass rusher. [He] expands the playbook with his versatility and playmaking skills as an inside/outside linebacker on the second level.” In other words, Collins can run forwards and backwards. And, when people see him do it, eyes could pop right out of heads.

“Going to a scheme that utilizes his versatility is key,” suggests Tony Pauline in his www.profootballnetwork.com analysis of Zaven Collins. “Not only is Collins scheme-diverse, but he’s also versatile within his role. He can provide value against the pass, against the run, and along the edge. That kind of player can be hard to come by.”

Performing well in the TU Pro Day may have pushed Collins higher in the draft than Cleveland’s 26^th pick. The Browns have the draft capital to move up in order to get him. When they drafted Mayfield, John Dorsey, as much super scout as supervisory general manager, rightly loved Mayfield. Replaced after he unwisely gave the team in 2019 to unready, unsteady Freddie Kitchens and watched Freddie screw up Mayfield and everything but the kitchen sink, Dorsey left rather than step aside. The management and coaching is broader and sounder now under Andrew Berry and Kevin Stefanski.

But is it listening when Collins addresses the question of whether he, an outside linebacker at Tulsa, can also terrorize as edge rusher? “I (tell teams),” Collins says, “any position that allows me to run, move freely, [does] not confine me to . . . one side, to let me really [be] in the defense is what’s going to best suit me—mostly, because I have a knack for the football. I like being around the football, like being able to run.”

He has been able to run since he played quarterback, linebacker, and safety for the Hominy Bucks and led them 41-12 record during his four seasons. They won the Class A state championship his senior year with 14-0 record. But Hominy, like Nowata, is small potatoes. It’s population was 3,565 in the 2010 census and was estimated to have fallen to 3,388 by 2019. It is nevertheless where football has long been the heartbeat. In 1927, during the early days of the NFL, the Hominy Indians, an outsider comprised entirely of Native American players, defeated the New York Giants after they had won the 1927 NFL title. Small town does not necessarily mean small time on the field.

Zevan Collins reminds me—the highest compliment I can offer—of Clay Matthews, the soul of the Browns defense during its last near-great period. They were not good enough to reach the Super Bowl, and Matthews was deemed Pro Football Hall of Fame unworthy in his last year of eligibility before descending into the Seniors slough pile. But they were something special. Collins, Swiss Army Knife of a linebacker, can be too.

“My background is basically old school,” he said on his pro day. “I’m from a small town. I’ve had coaches tell me I wasn’t good enough, just based on my school size. I’m tired of being the little man . . .” Like Mayfield, this chip on the shoulder could make him a very big Brown.