Who, what?
Lenoir-Rhyne, is that a real school?
That was a common thought among Patriots fans when Roger Goodell called out Kyle Dugger's name to the team in Round 2, No. 37 overall of the NFL Draft.
The Patriots traded out of the first round for a Division II player? Couldn't they have waited and got him in the later rounds?
No, the Patriots couldn't have and the second round was exactly where Dugger was projected to go. In fact, if he had come from a Power Five school, he likely would have been a first-round pick.
But, his unique story goes back even further than Dugger attending D-II Lenoir-Rhyne in Hickory, North Carolina that has roughly 2,500 students.
At one time, he didn't even know if football was right for him — basketball was his true love and the sport he excelled at most.
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Basketball is in Dugger's blood.
His mother, Kimberly, is in the Fort Valley State Athletic Hall of Fame for what she did on the court and could even dunk. His brother, Patrick, who is 6-foot-6 and 245 pounds, played at LaGrange (a small college in Georgia), and went on to a pro career overseas.
Growing up, that was Dugger's No. 1 sport — and without it he would not have got to where he is now.
Dugger played football and basketball in high school, but it wasn't until his senior year where he was a full-time starter on the football field at Whitewater High School in Fayetteville, Georgia because of his size (just 170 pounds).
Jake Copeland, who is now coaching at The Heritage School in Georgia, was Lenoir-Rhyne's recruiting coordinator at the time and he was checking out another player in Whitewater's secondary, but an assistant coach at the time, Wes Hardin, who was close with Copeland, said he should take a look at Dugger.
"He has everything, he just doesn't have as much film because he concentrated on basketball up until this year," Copeland recalled Hardin telling him at the time.
Copeland was immediately drawn to Dugger, especially after what Hardin told him, and from there he was on Lenoir-Rhyne's radar.
But, it was a strange time at the school.
The entire coaching staff departed for better opportunities and Copeland, who was a graduate assistant at the time, really didn't have anyone to answer to. He and three other GA's split up the recruiting duties and Copeland got the Georgia area since that was where he was from.
Without him, Dugger would not have made it to Lenoir-Rhyne.
The recruitment continued into the winter and Copeland even attended one of Dugger's basketball games against Northgate, his alma mater ironically, where he saw Dugger throw down a tremendous, highlight-reel windmill dunk.
Copeland couldn't let such a star athlete get away.
"He really loved basketball," he said. "It was one of those things where he never really thought about going to college to play football. He always thought he could go play basketball."
Basketball even got in the way of getting Dugger to the Lenoir-Rhyne campus for an official visit.
"It was a challenge to get him on an official visit because he didn't want to miss any basketball practices, he didn't want to miss any basketball games," Copeland said. "We couldn't even bring him up on our normal official visit weekends. We had to bring him up mid-week, which we were worried about because he didn't get the full experiences that you would if you did a weekend visit."
Ian Shields, who eventually got the Lenoir-Rhyne head coaching job and is now an assistant at UNLV, acknowledged without his basketball tape, Dugger may not have been targeted by the school.
"We saw something in him — we watched his basketball highlights and it was a slam dunk contest," he said. "We knew he was a great athlete and he came from a really strong family. He was an excellent student. He got rave reviews from his coaches in all sports. We really did our homework on him and he checked all the boxes."
Shields added: "His football highlight tapes were good don't mistake me, but to me it was his basketball highlights that really put him over the top because you could just see the sheer athleticism and his ability to play above the rim."
Even though Dugger only had two football offers, Lenoir-Rhyne was keeping its fingers crossed on signing day that it would be able to land him.
"Even on signing day, he wasn't ready to sign," Copeland said. "He wasn't sure that football was what he wanted to do and/or he wasn't sure that Lenoir-Rhyne was the school for him. At the time it was his best offer, and only offer. I think he had Reinhardt, which was a start-up program at the time. We were his only two offers.
"I remember having to call (the other coaches) on signing day and saying, 'Hey guys, we have to get this in.' It was a big scholarship and we were really hoping to get Kyle, but if we didn't get Kyle we would have needed to use that money elsewhere. I had to make those phone calls on signing day and really try and get that stuff done.
"I think we finally got his signed paperwork either that night for the next morning."
***
As soon as Dugger arrived on the Lenoir-Rhyne campus, roughly a five-hour drive from Fayetteville, he had a new mindset — it was all about football.
"When he got to Lenoir-Rhyne, he came with the motivation that, 'OK, football is what I am going to do and I am going to change my body.'" Copeland said. "He had worked out in the weight room, but most of his summers were spent doing AAU basketball, so he hadn't been able to go through a full weight lifting program.
"He attacked it with more intensity than I had every seen somebody do it."
The secondary was the strength of the team when Dugger got there, so with him being so undersized, Shields decided it would be best to red-shirt him and have him focus on getting his body right for the college level.
"He worked unbelievably hard," Shields said. "He probably put on 20, 25 pounds of muscle and really changed his body."
Copeland recalled following an away game when he and the team arrived back to campus around 10:30 p.m. on a Saturday night, Dugger, who wasn't on the travel squad because of his red-shirt year, was in the weight room getting a workout in.
"Not many freshman college players are doing that," he said.
The next fall, as a red-shirt freshman, Dugger got on the field for the first time and instantly made an impact starting at cornerback.
Dugger made 43 total tackles and led the team with six passes defensed and four interceptions. He was named the South Atlantic Conference Defensive Freshman of the Year.
"You could tell he really prepared himself and had a vision for himself that freshman year, that red-shirt year. Once he got on the field, he was the defensive newcomer of the year," Shields said. "He was already a good player, but you could see he was well on his way to becoming a great player."
In his exit interview after the season, his coach made sure to let him know it.
"I recall his exit interview at the end of his freshman year calling him in and saying, 'Kyle, you had a great year. There is just so much more in front of you.' I said, 'All these other guys are going to school and getting a great education and a great experience playing college football, and you're going to do that too, but you have a chance to be a pro football player,'" Shields said. "I wanted to make sure he had that vision at the beginning. There was no doubt at the end of that freshman year we had something special."
***
Dugger was clearly at a different level than the majority of Division II players he was going against.
Perhaps no one knows this better than current Lenoir-Rhyne quarterback Grayson Willingham.
"Bar none, the best talent I have seen at D-II, even though he was on my team," he said. "He did a lot of different things for us. I think my first year he was a DB, he was a corner for us and then he moved to free safety and then he played in the box a little bit. As a lot of people know, he is very versatile and he can do a lot of different stuff.
"The amount of ground that he can cover — we would do good-on-good when I was the starter and he would play in the middle of the field and if I didn't do a good job on my part looking him off, being on time, he was going to pick it. That was how it was. He was definitely the best athlete that I have seen at this level."
Dugger played in just one game in 2016 after suffering a torn meniscus in practice, but returned in full force in 2017.
In 10 games, he recorded 87 tackles and was named to the Second-Team All-Conference team at the end of the year. He was named First-Team All-South Atlantic Conference as a red-shirt junior in 2018 and then despite only playing in seven games due to a finger injury last year, Dugger earned the Cliff Harris Award, which is given to the best defensive player in D-II.
Not only did he excel as a safety playing all over the field, he was an exceptional punt returner.
As a red-shirt junior he averaged 17.2 yards per return and returned two for touchdowns, and then as a red-shirt senior he had 12 returns for 175 yards and two touchdowns.
While he only totaled four touchdowns his last two years, according to Willingham it should have been even more.
"He took back tons of punt returns and like half of them got called back, honestly," he said. "The first couple of years he had like two or three in game, it was stupid stuff. He got a couple called back. … He kind of just glides. He's really fast, but he gains a lot of ground and is really a smooth runner."
Even though he was one of, if not the best player in Lenoir-Rhyne's history, it was hard to know by the way he acted.
"You never would know," Willingham said. "He's just a humble guy and always good about talking with everybody. He was quiet early on, but I could really see him develop as a leader as I got older and I had the privilege of being a captain with him last year (Dugger was also captain as a junior). That was good to see his leadership style. Definitely a humble guy. You can tell he's just a grinder and has a chip on his shoulder."
Despite playing at the Division II level, Dugger was invited to the Senior Bowl, and that ultimately was huge when it came to his future in the NFL.
***
The No. 1 question with Dugger was how would he stack up against players who played at the FBS level all year, but that was answered in Mobile, Alabama as it was clear he belonged.
"Kyle would have been first-team at every school in the country," Shields said. "He can play anywhere and for anyone. He could play at Alabama, he could play at LSU, he could play at Oregon, he could play at any of them."
And because of what Dugger showed that Senior Bowl week, Bill Belichick and the Patriots knew he was worth selecting No. 37 overall in the 2020 NFL Draft.
"I think the Senior Bowl really helped Kyle," Belichick said on his post-draft video conference. "There he's running a pro defense against a pro offense with soon-to-be pro players. Whether it was one-on-one drills, catching punts, tackling, I think you could really see he was able to compete very favorably at that level of competition and his scheme represents something close to what we'd be doing. It was a short window, but it was a full week of practice, a game. I think I saw a lot of improvement during the week and feel like this is a kid that's smart, that works hard, that has a lot of ability.
"… Without the Senior Bowl, it certainly would have been for me a lot tougher projection if he wouldn't have been able to do that."
Even with Belichick deeming him worthy of a second-round selection, many are still doubting Dugger when it comes to transitioning to the NFL.
"I just think it is kind of funny everybody is freaking out, like Skip Bayless is talking trash," Willingham said. "But, that is their job. I think he played outstanding at the Senior Bowl. I got to watch that and Belichick would tell you that too. I think he really shined compared to the competition.
"It is tough because you're always going to have those people that look at the D-II film and say it is hard to translate, but I don't really think it is a big gamble, especially seeing him perform at the Senior Bowl and then the combine — his measurables are good.
"Obviously, I am bias, but I don't think it is a huge gamble."
Copeland agreed with Willingham when it comes to the doubters.
"I think they are absolutely wrong," Copeland said. "He has all the measurables, he has everything. I will be honest, if he was a SEC kid, he would have gone in the first round. It was one of those deals where no one projected him to grow like he grew.
"… I think he will definitely be an impact player."
