Yale’s Eiselen pursuing NFL dream
The day of the job interview to top all job interviews had been circled on Dieter Eiselen’s calendar for months.
NFL scouts would be converging on Connecticut to get a first-hand look at Yale’s intriguing All-Ivy League offensive lineman. Stopwatches would be clicking, notebooks would be filling up with results of the various agility drills for the South African native with five years of football playing experience under his belt.
However, when Thursday afternoon arrived and Eiselen went through a workout, he was breaking a sweat in the solitude of a basement of a home in Middlefield.
This was not how things were supposed to go but the restrictions in place due to the coronavirus crisis left Eiselen with little to do but prepare for a day when he does get to run the 40-yard dash, power through 225pound bench presses and put up numbers on par with the offensive linemen who took part in the NFL scouting combine last month.
“It definitely has been hard, my pro day was supposed to be happening today,” Eiselen said by phone on Thursday afternoon. “We have been getting ready for it, we have been training hard down in TEST Football Academy in New Jersey this whole semester but obviously now with the current circumstances we are in, that is not possible. It definitely has been a challenge but I am just trying to make the best of a bad situation.”
Eiselen had a video conference call with an NFL offensive line coach on Thursday morning after a recently scheduled private workout had been called off. There will come time for Eiselen to display his physical attributes but this call was about breaking down game film and displaying his football IQ. Under normal circumstances, it would have been one of many such private workouts for a prospect who had scouts showing up at every Yale game this season. Eiselen’s exposure to the pro scouts was further aided in January when he took part in the NFLPA Collegiate Bowl at the Rose Bowl. Fresh off leading Yale to a 9-1 record and share of the Ivy League title as a senior, Eiselen helped the National team embark on three consecutive scoring drives in the first half en route to a 30-20 win.
The practices leading up to the game were just as important. Eiselen saw time at both guard and center during the week as he went up against defensive linemen or linebackers from ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and SEC programs under the watchful eye of National team assistant coaches as well as pro Football Hall of Fame offensive linemen Kevin Mawae and Jackie Slater.
“It was an awesome experience, it was my first time in Los Angeles (and) getting coached by Kevin Mawae and Jackie Slater was awesome, I tried to soak everything in,” Eiselen said. “It was refreshing to get a new perspective from those guys who have 36 years of cumulative playing experience so obviously they know a thing or two about playing professional football.
“I didn’t feel out of place at all, all those guys who were from Ole Miss and Georgia and Texas and from all over, I felt like I was competing against the best and I was doing a good job, it was just an invaluable experience.”
It’s been quite the ascension for the 300-pound former rugby standout and weightlifter. Armed with hopes of playing college football, he attended a camp in Washington, D.C. before deciding to dive headlong into mastering a new sport. He spent a year at Choate but was offered a roster spot at Yale before even playing a game at the Wallingford school. Over the next four years, Eiselen started 33 games and was a member of a pair of Ivy League championship teams. He is also set to graduate from Yale in May but before that, he is hoping to become the first offensive lineman from Yale to be taken in the NFL draft since 1975.
“I hope to be picked up in the later rounds,” Eiselen said. “If that doesn’t end up happening, being an undrafted free agent is probably an advantage because you get to decide what team you go to and you kind of get to decide what your situation is going to be, you can analyze the charts of the various teams and see what where they have needs and see if you can meet those needs.”
The plan is to take part in a pro day in Trumbull on Apr. 9 with Reed Klubnik, Yale’s all-time leader in career receiving yards. When the pro day was originally scheduled, players from other Connecticut schools were planning to take part but with restrictions in place preventing large gatherings, it will just be Eiselen and Klubnik going through drills.
Klubnik went to Florida not long after the season ended to begin working alongside other players with dreams of playing in the NFL while Eiselen headed to the TEST Football Academy in Martinsville, N.J.
Eiselen said that his time in New Jersey has been invaluable and he believes he will be able to put up test scores similar to the top offensive linemen at the NFL scouting combine. He is continuing to follow the training regiment he started at TEST Football Academy while he remains in Connecticut.
“They are a bunch of great guys and it was a great environment to train in so I am following their program step by step and continuing to do that,” Eiselen said. “I record myself and I send videos to coaches I would have been working with so they can critique the technique and make sure I am doing the things correctly. It is great training, I have definitely gotten a lot faster and a lot stronger, hopefully I can test the numbers that I have been testing.”
The original pro day was set to be part of an unforgettable stretch of events for Eiselen including April’s NFL draft and Yale’s commencement ceremonies in May. Yale announced on Friday that those ceremonies have been called off. Through all the chaos Eiselen hasn’t been able to return home to see his family. Thankfully, the host family that he lived with when he attended Choate once again opened their doors to him but it is hard being about 8,000 miles away from his hometown of Stellenbosch.
“I was lucky that I got to see them around Christmas right before I went out (to the NFLPA Collegiate Bowl),” Eiselen said. “I usually would go home right after school ended but now there is a lot of uncertainty.
“FaceTime is a wonderful thing so it is no issue to be able to talk to them, luckily I can communicate with them daily. It is frustrating, I have gotten used to not seeing them for long stretches of time. I definitely want to see them in the near future but I have things to accomplish here and they would want me to pursue those things first.”