5 Minutes With Roob: Dane Evans Talks Texas, Career at Tulsa and Hair

In today's "Five Minutes with Roob," Reuben Frank chats with Eagles rookie quarterback Dane Evans:
 
Roob: Hey everybody, welcome to today's Camp Central. We're here with quarterback Dane Evans. Welcome to Philadelphia. I'm sure Philly's a lot like your hometown of Sanger, Texas, just south of the Oklahoma border. I did a lot of research on Sanger. It looks like in the 1800s it was an old cattle town and it looks like it still is. So, what's life like in Sanger?
 
Evans: Well, there's really not much to do like you said. It's a small cattle town. It actually got really big when railroads started connecting the country - they teach us this at Sanger High School - and there's really not much there. It's the typical Small Town, U.S.A. There's one side of the railroad tracks, there's the other side of the railroad tracks. We've got two stoplights in the town and eight stop signs, not counting the neighborhood stops. There's not really much to do except for football on Friday nights, and Lake Ray Roberts is just north of us, so a lot of people go out to the lake in good summertime weather.
 
Roob: I saw somewhere that when you were 12 years old, you were on the Pop Warner team that won the state title and you were on the baseball team that won the age-group World Series, and you won the Texas state wrestling title at 92 pounds, all in the same year. That's a pretty good year.
 
Evans: Yeah, it was a good year. I still haven't topped it. But, yeah, it was kind of crazy. That was when we lived in Arlington - my dad's a coach, so we've moved around. We went to Florida and played at the Wide World of Sports in Orlando for football. We won that, and that summer - it was a bunch of the same guys, too - we went down to Beaumont, Texas, and won a baseball national championship. And then in the winter going into the next year, I won a wrestling championship. Wrestling was always one of my first loves. It was the first sport I did. My family's from Oklahoma so a lot of people wrestle there. It's kind of how everyone plays basketball around here - everyone down there wrestles, so it's a very easy sport to get into.
 
Roob: So was that real wrestling or fake wrestling?
 
Evans: No, we weren't dropping elbows and hitting people with chairs. It was the real deal.
 
Roob: You go to Tulsa and I think one of the most impressive things about you is that your freshman year, you had four touchdowns and 10 interceptions, you completed 42 percent of your passes, the team wasn't great. But every year you got better and then by your senior year, you guys won a bowl game down in Miami, you went 10-3 and put up some good numbers. How tough was that freshman year all around and what kind of a process was it to get to where you were by your senior year?
 
Evans: It wasn't easy, like you said. Freshman year, I went into the season as the backup and the starter got hurt halfway through, so they threw me in and I didn't know I was starting until the day before I got my first start. I got no reps in practice and like you said, four touchdowns and 10 interceptions is not very good. But every year I kept growing from that and every season, we actually had a new offensive coordinator, too, so it wasn't just trying to get better to keep your job, it was also learning a new offense. At the end of my career we finally won a bowl game, went 10-3 and we had some close finishes. It could have been a lot more wins and a bigger bowl game, but you know, my career - when you look back on those numbers, it kind of sums up what I'm trying to do. Sometimes it's not the best but if you keep working at it, keep grinding away, it'll get better and better.
 
Roob: You actually had more touchdowns in the bowl game than your whole freshman year. You had five touchdowns that game - that's not bad. You completed 74 percent of your passes, threw for 304 yards. But despite a really good senior year, you didn't get invited to the combine. How tough of a blow was that? I guess it put a lot of pressure on you going into your pro day.
 
Evans: It wasn't fun. But yeah, it put an even bigger chip on my shoulder going into pro day, because I knew I belonged there and not that I was the best coming out, but I knew I belonged in the group of guys that got to go up there. I think I showed that on my pro day and I knew it was going to be an uphill battle this whole way. I'm just very lucky that a team gave me an opportunity like this to come in and show what I can do.
 
Roob: For people who don't know, you were with the Jets. You had a tryout during OTAs and then came down here to Philly for a tryout, so you weren't even technically on the roster and you went out during OTAs and threw the ball really well. That's a lot of pressure because it's basically a tryout. Did you feel like you acquitted yourself pretty well?
 
Evans: So the Jets was just a straight tryout, and their OTAs were the weekend before the Eagles'. I was super nervous going into that because I didn't know what to expect and I couldn't really play up there because I was so nervous and y'all will come to find out that I'm very hard on myself. I was so uptight I couldn't play, and then when I came here for the Eagles' tryout, I just relaxed and had fun and played ball. I think it showed because they invited me back and I'm getting to learn from some really good guys, talking both player-wise and in the coaches' office.
 
Roob: You look at the lockers right across from you - Matt McGloin, Nick Foles and Carson Wentz are all guys who have played a lot in the league and are veteran guys who have won games in the league. How much of a learning experience can this be for you?
 
Evans: It's exactly what I want. I'm a rookie who ran a completely different offense in college. We ran the Baylor offense, and our plays were like three-word plays. That's not how it is here, so really, all three of those guys have helped me. In my first minicamp, Matt was huge in my success. Every question I had, he answered it. And now with Nick and Matt and Carson being back, I can ask any one of them a question. And I don't want to bug them with questions because they have a job to do, but when I have one, I ask them and they take their time and sincerely answer it.
 
Roob: All right, I've got to finish up by asking this. If people Google your name, they're going to find photos of you with a lot of hair. I mean, I'm talking like you could have been a member of the Grateful Dead or something. What's the story with that? Was that how people wore their hair in Texas?
 
Evans: No, no it's not that. When I was in high school at Sanger, we were a public high school, but it's a small town so we had a dress code and guys' hair couldn't touch your ears or your shirt collar. When I committed to Tulsa, I knew I was going up there a semester early so I started growing my hair out, and I told the principal, ‘Look, I'm getting out of here, so I'm going to start letting it grow.' She let me do it and for my first three years, I didn't cut my hair at Tulsa. Like you said, it was down to (my shoulders) and it was flopping out of the helmet and now I'm bald. I grew out of it at the right time."

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