Griffin Oakes is ready to chase his NFL dreams, but he is only willing to chase them for so long.
“I don’t want to be a guy who has been trying to get into the NFL at age 30,” said Oakes, 23, a former placekicker at Greenwood High School and Indiana University. “It just doesn’t sound like a path I would like.”
But after a football career at IU that ended with Oakes as second-leading scorer in program history, he feels he owes it to himself to give professional football a try.
The NFL Draft starts with the first round Thursday evening and runs through Saturday.
Oakes is the only player in IU history to twice be named the Big Ten Conference’s Bakken-Andersen Kicker of the Year. His 354 total points rank him behind only former All-American tailback and 1989 Heisman Trophy runner-up Anthony Thompson in school history.
Such credentials should help get Oakes a tryout with an NFL team should he not be selected in one of the seven rounds of the draft. But, as he’s discovered, it’s not all about statistics.
“It’s been a lot different process. One that I’m not used to,” said Oakes, who graduated from Indiana in December with a degree in exercise science. “I waited around thinking things would just come to me, and they really didn’t.”
Enter Jim Ulrich, a sports agent with Atlanta-based Enter Sports Management.
Hired by Oakes in late January, Ulrich has spent two months trying to make the kicker as marketable and draft-ready as possible. Ulrich currently represents two NFL punters — Lachlan Edwards of the New York Jets and Philadelphia’s Cameron Johnston.
“The big emphasis is leg strength,” Ulrich said. “What the NFL is going to want to see are deep kickoffs. NFL footballs are different than in college.
“They travel differently, and the sweet spot on an NFL football are significantly smaller.”
At Ulrich’s recommendation, Oakes spent a month (Feb. 15-March 15) in Birmingham, Alabama, attending a kicking camp run Mike McCabe, owner of One On One Kicking.
McCabe, regarded as a top talent high school, college and NFL evaluator, runs similar camps in Atlanta and in Pensacola, Florida.
Oakes worked on virtually every aspect of his kicking.
“It was different,” Oakes said. “That was my first time being more than an hour away from family and friends, but I was able to break down my kicking more. I thought I knew a lot about kicking, but these guys really helped.”
Kickers attending the One On One camp started each day lifting weights from 9:30 to 11 a.m. After lunch, they spent another two and a half to three hours kicking and monitoring their progress.
Oakes now starts his approach a step back from how he did it in college. He also feels that he’s improved his accuracy.
Since returning home, the 5-foot-11, 195-pound Oakes has kept in shape lifting weights at Greenwood or Center Grove High School. Sometimes he’ll drive to Bloomington and get his workout in at IU.
On April 3, Oakes worked out at Indiana’s Pro Day inside the Mellancamp Pavillion.
Regional scouts from approximately 20 NFL teams were present, though the main attractions were three of Oakes’ former Hoosier teammates — linebacker Tegray Scales, receiver Simmie Cobbs and quarterback Richard Lagow.
For Oakes, who walked on at Indiana during preseason camp in 2013, having to prove himself is nothing new.
“It went well,” he said of his Pro Day experience. “It wasn’t a day where people were necessarily coming to see me, but hopefully I got some people’s attention.”
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Griffin Oakes finished his career at Indiana University ranked second on the school’s all-time scoring list. A year-by-year look at how he picked up those points:
Season;FG;PAT;Points
Freshman;13;23;62
Sophomore;24;53;125
Junior;16;33;81
Senior;16;38;86
Total;69;147;354
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