The Chicago Bears had plenty of reasons to draft Colston Loveland with the 10th overall pick. For one, he’s a physical specimen. There are very few players with his mixture of size (6’6, 250 lbs) and speed. Couple that with some seriously advanced route-running ability, and you start to understand why head coach Ben Johnson was smitten. Then there is the clutch angle. Loveland developed a reputation at Michigan for always bringing his best in big games. He was a constant menace against Ohio State and delivered some gigantic moments in the Wolverines’ national championship victory.
However, there might be a deeper truth to this. It is Loveland’s passion for the game. Since GM Ryan Poles took over, the Bears have said that they look for players with a deep love for football. Those guys tend to put in the most work and play the hardest. People who paid attention would’ve recognized this in Loveland years ago. According to Steven Greenberg of the Chicago Sun-Times, the tight end developed a reputation for being kind of a maniac about football as far back as the 4th grade.
He was a different animal.
In fourth grade, Loveland wanted to play tackle football, but kids his age weren’t allowed to play tackle in Gooding. Hagerman, on the other hand, needed numbers just to field a team in a tackle league for fifth- and sixth-graders, so Loveland — not that much larger than most his age back then — signed up there.
“Colston was something,” Tom Faulkner recalled. “He was juking these older boys, breaking tackles, moving up the field. He was always really strong.”…
…He went to Zubizarreta and said the summer training regimen the rest of the team was following wasn’t enough for him, not even close. Zubizarreta, a former college athlete, threw everything he could think of at Loveland.
“Squats, power cleans, bench, hip flexors, hamstrings, lunges,” Zubizarreta said. “He did the hard things every day and never had a bad day in here. Even your hardest workers have bad days, but he never had a bad day.”
Colston Loveland is constantly looking for the next challenge.
That is a common trait you often find in winners. The way they constantly stay on top of their game comes from constantly moving the goal posts back. Once they reach a milestone, they don’t rest and enjoy the accomplishment. They reset and think about how they can top what they just did. It is how Colston Loveland became a highly sought-after recruit despite coming from a town of barely 300 people. It is how he became a 1st round pick despite never being the primary offensive weapon in his team’s offense at Michigan. He just did things that made him impossible to ignore. Having somebody with that mentality in the locker room always leads to good things.
