Joe Schobert Wisconsin

Joe Schobert (58) went from walk-on at Wisconsin to Big Ten Linebacker of the Year.

(Marvin Fong, The Plain Dealer)

CLEVELAND, Ohio - Waukesha West High School football coach Steve Rux was out of state when the player he calls the best athlete to ever come through the school finally started getting noticed.

"As I get on the plane I was starting to get all these phone calls from all these recruiters," Rux said in a phone interview with cleveland.com. "What is Joe Schobert doing? Is he still going to North Dakota or what's he going to do?"

Despite playing only about 66 miles east of Camp Randall Stadium, Schobert couldn't muster any offers from an FBS school, including the one he wanted to play for in his home state. Instead, despite rushing for nearly 2,500 yards his junior season and serving as both an effective run stopping and coverage safety, he was ready to continue his career at the Universtiy of North Dakota, an FCS school.

It turns out, all he needed to do was participate in a dunk contest on the crossbar of the goalposts.

"He had this thing where he takes a football and he goes up and he jams it over the crossbar in the endzone," Rux said. "He jumps and he'll take it between his legs and then up over the top and he jams it."

When Schobert performed that dunk during a contest at the 2012 Wisconsin Football Coaches Association All-Star game, on top of impressing in other competitions to see who was the fastest and who could jump the highest, those in attendance came to a startling realization.

"He was the best athlete in that group," Rux said. "So here are the best kids in the state of Wisconsin, some of them with scholarships to the University of Wisconsin and they're looking at Joe and they're saying, 'He's faster than anybody we have here.' He was the fastest guy in camp."

'You missed on this kid'

Schobert's athleticism is no surprise to Rux or anyone who saw him play any number of sports at West High School. Along with playing three positions in football, he played basketball and qualified for the state track meet in the high jump.

"He was an outstanding basketball player," Rux said. "When they needed a shot, he was the guy that would make a bucket at the end of a game."

That's not just lip service from Rux, either. Schobert actually made a game-winning three-pointer in a tournament game.

"He hits the shot and the place just erupts right at the end of the game and everybody's jumping around and Joe, he's just kind of standing there like, 'What did you expect?'" Rux said.

On top of all that, Rux didn't hesitate to use Schobert in any number of roles on the football field. He started at both running back and safety his junior and senior years and even played wide receiver when the offense went into a spread formation. He rushed for 2,458 yards his junior season, according to the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel, and set the state championship game rushing record when West won the state crown.

"That was really our game," Rux said, "hand it off to Joe and then play-action and throw over the top. He was carrying it on average about 25 times a game and he was a guy that could hit a home run coming out of the backfield just by handing the ball off to him."

Defensively, having Schobert as the last line of defense was vital.

"We had actually talked about him playing as an inside linebacker, but in the scheme that we were running and with the personnel that we had, we liked to have him be in the deep, middle of the field," Rux said, "and so if anything comes through the line as far as running back or if they're throwing the ball deep, he was always the guy that was going to keep them out of the endzone."

"They said they didn't want me too close to the line to get hurt in high school because I was a running back, too," Schobert told cleveland.com, "so they put me at safety. I played it a lot like a linebacker. Came down hill a little too fast a couple times, especially when I was younger."

Still, none of the success he had across multiple sports made a single FBS coach pause to consider offering Schobert a chance.

"It's a puzzle to me, how the recruiting went for him because we've had other guys that have gotten Division I scholarships," Rux said. "There was another kid off of that team that got a scholarship."

Schobert, for his part, believes part of the problem is that Wisconsin wasn't viewed at the time as a recruiting hot bed. He also said that he didn't spend much time marketing himself.

"I was focusing on my other sports and I didn't really go to football camps and stuff," he said.

So when video of that dunk started making the rounds following a week in which Rux said Schobert "tore it up," things began to change and change quickly.

"They sent this to Coach (Bret) Bielema up at Wisconsin," Rux said, "and they're like, 'Hey, take a look at this kid. You missed on this kid.'

"Wisconsin had called me and were really interested in trying to find a way to get him up there as a preferred walk-on."

Now it was decision time for Schobert: take the opportunity to play at North Dakota or make his way with the Badgers as a walk-on. Not only was the pull of playing at home strong, so was the history of walk-on success stories at Wisconsin.

"When the opportunity was afforded to me, just looking back at all the guys," Schobert said, "it's not like you're going to go there and you're going to be a scout team guy for four years. Some places, even if you're really good, I've heard some stories about schools where there are guys on the scout team who are doing really well in practice, but they never get a chance on Saturdays. Wisconsin's not like that."

Rux had faith that Schobert could make it work in Madison.

"I (said), 'Hey, here's your shot. Go to Wisconsin.'" Rux said. "I always thought he'd fit at that level. So that was my thought to him was take your shot and make the most of it because that's where you belong."

"The whole culture is hard-working, smart and dependable kind of guys," Schobert said, "and I think that's the key for a walk-on, too."

'Where does he fit?'

One of the issues Schobert faced during the recruiting process was overcoming his versatility in a way.

"I think a lot of it was the positions that he played in high school were not the positions that he was going to be recruited to play at the next level," Rux said. "I think they looked at him as a guy that was real smooth in the way that he ran and had good height and good athleticism, but I think for them, trying to figure out, is he an outside linebacker, is he a safety? Where does he fit at the next level? I think that's what they were struggling with in terms of trying to determine if he was a scholarship guy or not."

Schobert is currently listed on the Browns roster at 6-foot-1, 244 pounds. Rux said he was about 195 pounds as a junior and 205 pounds as a senior at West.

Once he got to Wisconsin, it became obvious that outside linebacker was the place for Schobert and the transition began.

"It's like any transition in college," Schobert said. "It's totally new -- the footwork, the handwork was a new experience but I eventually was able to get hold of it."

In a youth sports world of specialization, it might be easy to point at the issues Schobert had getting noticed and chalk it up as a win for focusing on one sport. Schobert and his coach disagree.

"Our philosophy here at Waukesha West has always been we want them to play as many sports as they can play," Rux said. "Therefore, they're competing in different roles in different sports and when it's a critical time, when you've got to make a play in competition, you've been in that situation. It doesn't matter if you're catching a ball in the endzone or you've got to make a play in basketball at the end of a game, that moment, you've been through it before in multiple, different sports."

"It helps with your fluidity playing other sports," Schobert said. "Hand-eye coordination with baseball. Basketball, you're moving in space, when you're in the air, contorting your body and stuff like that. I think it really helps."

The athleticism that helped make Schobert a multisport star is getting noticed already by his bosses at the NFL level.

"Athletic linebacker," special teams coordinator Chris Tabor said. "Smart, intelligent football player. I think the things -- that as you evaluate him on tape coming out of Wisconsin -- you're seeing those, it's translating at this level."

"Athletic, versatile, tough," vice president of player personnel Andrew Berry said after the team drafted him.

It's the athleticism that was on display at Wisconsin and left recruiters wishing they had known then what they know now.

"I have some of those same recruiters that come through and one of the first things that they say is, 'We screwed up on Joe Schobert.'" Rux said. "'We messed up. We missed on him.' They say that right away."

New Cleveland Browns linebacker Joe Schobert proving white men CAN jump ... pic.twitter.com/TLJ5cFOvjj — Steven R. Walker (@Steve_R_Walker) May 2, 2016

'A lot of new Browns fans in Waukesha'

By the time the Browns drafted Schobert in the fourth round in April, he had gone from being a preferred walk-on to one of college football's most decorated linebackers. He played 45 games total for the Badgers, including 28 starts. He was honored as First team All-America by FWAA and ESPN, second-team All America by AP, Walter Camp and Sporting News; consensus first-team All-Big Ten; semifinalist for the Bednarik, Lombardi and Burlsworth awards; Butkus-Fitzgerald Big Ten Linebacker of the Year; NFL draft pick.

Through it all, nothing changed for Schobert.

"There's just a lot of opportunities that are afforded to you if you just follow instructions and work hard," he said, "and I knew that was going to be the case so I came in and it happened for me. ...

"... Nobody really knows when you come in (to Wisconsin) who's a walk-on and who's on scholarship," he said. "Sometimes, after a while, you feel like, 'That guy better be on scholarship,' and sometimes you think that guy has to be on scholarship and you find out he's a walk-on because he gets awarded a scholarship a year down the road. Nobody really asks unless you say it to somebody, nobody really knows."

And, of course, Schobert never lost focus of his dream of making it to the NFL.

"(I) felt like I had to prove to everybody what was going on in my head," he said. "I had to prove what I knew I could do and it's worked out."

Schobert now holds the honor of being the first player from Waukesha West drafted into the NFL, according to Rux.

"It's going to be exciting to see him play for the Browns," he said. "You've got a lot of new Browns fans around here in Waukesha."

Schobert's shot at a big-time college career seemed far from a slam dunk back in 2012. Now, thanks in part to a slam dunk, he's got a shot to make it at the game's highest level.

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