As the lone University of Tennessee at Chattanooga football player at the Senior Bowl earlier this month, offensive lineman Cole Strange surely had to be intimidated by all those Alabama and Georgia helmets on the field.
Or at least a little bit, right?
"Hell no!" Strange blurted recently when posed the question. "With the Chattanooga helmet, I felt right at home. I didn't even pay attention to the helmets, to tell you the truth.
"I saw them on film, but when I was actually playing, I did not care one bit about that."
Those comments came as no surprise to Rusty Wright, who was UTC's linebackers coach and special teams coordinator in 2016 when Strange was redshirting and returned as head coach in 2019 to inherit Strange as a two-year starter.
"He has that true old-school offensive lineman mindset," Wright said. "You get lined up, and it doesn't make a crap who's on the other side of you. You just go get after it and go get it done. That's him, and it's with everything he does.
"If you tell him he's not going to be good at something, he'll show you. That's why those guys love him at that level. His personality will help him a bunch."
Strange, a five-year starter and a three-time All-Southern Conference selection for the Mocs, is in between a Senior Bowl appearance in Mobile, Alabama, and a trip to the NFL combine in Indianapolis, which will take place March 1-7. The 6-foot-6, 301-pounder from Knoxville is just the second UTC player ever to play in the Senior Bowl and receive a combine invitation in the same draft cycle, joining eventual New England Patriots defensive end Keionta Davis in 2017.
Although his thoughts have shifted to the combine, Strange won't forget his Senior Bowl experience any time soon.
"I was definitely expecting the competition, because everyone who is there is going to be an elite player," Strange said. "The one thing I wasn't fully prepared for was just how busy we would be. I knew we would be busy with meetings and working with the (New York) Jets coaching staff and meeting with other NFL teams as well, but we had one two-hour break on that Friday afternoon.
"Every other day, we had something scheduled from the time we woke up to the time we went to sleep. It was tough, but I loved it. It was all football."
It was also a new position.
Strange made nine starts at left guard and two at left tackle this past season, when he earned the SoCon's Jacobs Blocking Award for a second straight year. During his week in Mobile, he mostly worked at center, which is where he started in the actual contest.
"At any level, when you can snap the football, it is so important," Wright said, "and for that coaching staff at the Senior Bowl to throw him in at center in a week when he's trying to work hard to get into the draft and into the combine and then trot him out there with the first group - I think he started one game for us at center, and that was in 2019, when we had everybody hurt at that time.
"For those folks at that level to take this kid and put him at center for a week to see how he handles it says a lot about Cole. They wanted to win that game even though it's the Senior Bowl, and I think he showed that week that he has that versatility to play center or guard, and he can be serviceable at tackle. I think that was huge for him."
UTC’S COMBINE INVITEES
Eldra Buckley (2007)Buster Skrine (2011)B.J. Coleman (2012)Derrick Lott (2015)Davis Tull (2015)Keionta Davis (2017)Corey Levin (2017)Cole Strange (2022)Source: UTC sports information
WalterFootball.com ranks Strange as the No. 16 guard in the 2022 NFL draft, while a seven-round projection by Profootballnetwork.com pegs him going 144th overall to the Carolina Panthers as the first pick of the fifth round. There are certain to be many more mock drafts in the weeks ahead for the late April event in Las Vegas, but Strange is taking these monstrous moments one at a time.
The NFL extended 324 invitations to this year's combine, including 82 to former Southeastern Conference players, but to only 18 who competed at the Football Championship Subdivision level. Strange is not only representing the "Power C" in Indianapolis, but he was the only player invited from the SoCon.
Multiple drills await this ultimate underdog - Strange was a two-star prospect coming out of Farragut High School and the nation's No. 3,804 signee in the 2016 class - as well as a continuation of interviews that began in Mobile.
"We talked to every single NFL team, and it was kind of like a speed-dating thing," he said. "We talked to 16 different teams for 15 minutes each on Monday, and then we did the other 16 teams on Thursday. We were falling asleep at 1 in the morning and had to get up at 6 for breakfast.
"But it was fun, and now I'm fired up for the combine. I'm absolutely fired up for it."
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524. Follow him on Twitter @DavidSPaschall.