MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2019 The Boston Globe Sports C3
Patriots have mined Carroll connection
who graduated with more than
a dozen school passing records.
McDaniels, No. 12, turned him-
self into a crafty possession re-
ceiver after losing the QB battle
to Caserio. Ziegler, No. 8, was a
fearless, three-time All-Ameri-
can kick and punt returner.
And Schuplinski, No. 44, was a
hard-nosed fullback.
Together they helped lead
the Blue Streaks to a 27-5 re-
cord between 1996-98, includ-
ing the school’s first win in the
NCAA playoffs, reaching the
Round of 16 in 1997.
John Carroll has a surpris-
ingly rich NFL history for a
small D3 school. Hall of Fame
coach Don Shula played there
in the 1940s. Three current
NFL general managers (or
equivalent) are from Carroll
(Tom Telesco of the Chargers,
Dave Caldwell of the Jaguars,
and Caserio). Ravens offensive
coordinator Greg Roman, and
brothers Chris and Brian Polian
(Jaguars pro personnel director
and Notre Dame assistant
coach) went there as well. And
Fletcher put the school on the
map as a player.
Yet the late ’90s class that in-
cluded Caserio, McDaniels,
Ziegler, and Schuplinski cer-
tainly made its own mark.
“Even at Division 3, they
took it very seriously,” said
Chris Wenzler, John Carroll’s
sports information director
since 1990. “They were film
nuts, and it showed on the field.
They were students of the game
that wanted to see where that
would take them.”
Star in the film room
All four grew up in north-
east Ohio and stayed locally for
college. Caserio, or “Nicky,” as
his coaches called him, arrived
at John Carroll in 1994, a year
before the others. He spurned
Carnegie Mellon’s offer and in-
stead followed his high school
offensive coordinator to Carroll.
McDaniels and Schuplinski
arrived in ’95. McDaniels came
to compete for the Blue Streaks’
quarterback job, but Caserio
beat him
out, and
McDaniels
was the
backup as a
freshman.
“The co-
ordinator
was his high
school
coach, so it
was kind of
obvious
who was go-
ing to be the
guy,” said
Greg Debeljak, formerly the re-
ceivers coach at Carroll who is
now head coach at Case West-
ern Reserve.
Losing out wasn’t easy at
first for McDaniels. He is a foot-
ball lifer, the son of legendary
high school football coach
Thom McDaniels. At storied
Canton-McKinley High School,
they were nationally ranked
and sent kids to major pro-
grams.
McDaniels stepped away
from the team as a sophomore
to go home and coach with his
father, but returned for his ju-
nior and senior seasons, and
converted himself into a wide
receiver.
“You’re a quarterback at
Canton-McKinley and your dad
is this revered coach,” Wenzler
said. “To have to take a step
back and reevaluate and say, ‘I
still want to be in this game,
what can I do?’ I think that
takes a lot.”
McDaniels played in all 20
games over his final two sea-
sons, and caught 41 passes for
732 yards and 7 touchdowns.
uJOHN CARROLL
Continued from Page C1
One of his most memorable
plays was a 70-yard catch down
the sideline against Baldwin-
Wallace on a beautiful throw
from Caserio.
“It was great for me because
it gave me a different perspec-
tive,” McDaniels said of the
switch to receiver. “And I got to
play in the same huddle with
[Caserio]. That was the most
fun I had playing in college.”
McDaniels was more of a
contributor than a leader on the
field. But where he really
shined was in practice and in
the film room.
“The thing I remember
about him is suggestions he
had,” Debeljak said. “He was
just different than everybody
else because of how much he
knew already. But he was also
very respectful.
“I’m sure there were times in
his mind where he was like,
‘What are these coaches doing?’
But you never heard that. I
think that’s the way his dad
raised him.”
McDaniels was definitely
more of the rah-rah guy in the
locker room, too.
“I just remember him get-
ting in my ear, picking me up,
getting my head straight,” said
David Vitatoe, the team’s kick-
er who is now the school’s di-
rector of alumni relations. “Be-
fore big games, after big kicks I
made, he was one of the first
guys to kind of quietly pull me
aside and give me some great
words of encouragement. And I
always thought that was a spe-
cial quality about Josh. The
coach was in him back then.”Intensity at early age
Football didn’t come as nat-
urally to Caserio, but nobody
was going to outwork him.
“Because it was his high
school offense, he knew it bet-
ter than maybe some of the
coaches on the staff,” Debeljak
said.
The one word everyone uses
to describe Caserio: intense.
“Yeah, real intense,” Fletcher
said, laughing. “You would al-
most worry about Nick like
that. This kid, he’s too young to
be this se-
rious and
this in-
tense.”
“This
kid, he
was a
coach’s
dream,”
Debeljak
said.
“And at
the same
time, you
were like,
‘Man, I
hope he has some fun at certain
times.’ He just was so serious.
‘Would you just relax?’ He was
all over their asses a lot.”
Caserio knew every detail of
the offense, and expected the
same of his teammates.
“He was just one of those
guys that you didn’t want to
mess up, because you’d let him
down, frankly,” Vitatoe said.
“Not a lot of laughter, but a
lot of intensity and a lot of di-
rection came from him, that’s
for sure,” said John Priestap, a
receiver and one of Caserio’s
best friends.
But Caserio’s coaches and
teammates admired his focus.
The son of a concrete contrac-
tor, Caserio was all business
from the moment he stepped
on campus.
“He was the hardest-work-
ing guy on the team. Nobody
else was even close,” said
Fletcher, a four-time Pro Bowl-
er. “He was really a very accom-
plished quarterback, and a tre-
mendous athlete. Good at foot-
ball, good at basketball, and a
great leader for our team.”Caserio ran a pro-style of-
fense, transforming Carroll
from a running team to a pock-
et-passing team. Starting for
3½ years, he threw for 8,434
yards and 78 touchdowns and
led the Blue Streaks to their
first playoff win, a 30-20 victory
over Hanover in 1997. Caserio
earned induction into John
Carroll’s athletics hall of fame
in 2009.
The Streaks just couldn’t get
over the hump against Mount
Union, the legendary program
with 13 national titles and a
110-game win streak from
1994-2005.
“We played them in the play-
offs and Nick took an absolute
beating,” Debeljak said.
“Nick got a hairline fracture
in his jaw, against Mount Union
in 1997, and stayed in the
game,” said Priestap.
Schuplinski arrived in 1995,
the same year as McDaniels.
The two quickly bonded over
wrestling and NASCAR (and
football, of course) and became
roommates and close friends.
The Blue Streaks made Sch-
uplinski a no-nonsense full-
back, mostly a lead blocker and
occasional receiver out of the
backfield. The experience
helped develop him into an
NFL quarterback coach.
“He carried the ball maybe
five times in his career,” said
Debeljak, “but he just knew ev-
erything — knew every protec-
tion, every blocking scheme,
and sacrificed for the better-
ment of the team.”
Ziegler was a couple years
younger, arriving in 1997. He
was a player in the Julian Edel-
man mold — short, undersized,
unassuming,andabsolutely
fearless.
Before the 1998 season
opener at Stonehill College, a
stranger in an airport chatted
up the team and was trying to
guess everyone’s positions.
“We point to [Ziegler], and
he says, ‘What is he, the kicker?
Student trainer, right?’ ” Debel-
jak said. “It was really funny,
but you could argue he was our
best football player.”
Ziegler had seven return
touchdowns in his career (four
kickoff, three punt) and was
named an All-American three
times.
“I sprung him for a couple
touchdowns,” Fletcher boasts.
Ziegler was inducted into
Carroll’s hall of fame in 2010.
“If he was a couple inches
taller, a couple pounds heavier,
he would’ve been playing Divi-
sion 1 football,” Vitatoe said.
“Every time he touched the ball,
he could take it to the house.”Professional pinnacle
After graduation, the four
went their separate ways. Mc-
Daniels used his football con-
nections to land a graduate as-
sistant job at Michigan State
under Nick Saban. Caserio
went to work at Merrill Lynch
in Cleveland. Schuplinski and
Ziegler coached high school
and small-college football.
Caserio didn’t last long in
the financial world.
“Six months into that he
said, ‘I can’t do this, I need to
get into football,’ ” said Prie-
stap, who worked at Merrill
Lynch with Caserio. “He said, ‘I
know I’m not going to make
any money, but I know I have to
be in football.’ Then he walked
away from Merrill Lynch to be
an assistant at Saginaw Valley
State.”But their loyalties drew
them back together.
In 2001, a friend of McDan-
iels’s from Michigan State, Bri-
an Daboll, landed a job with the
Patriots and persuaded them to
hire McDaniels as a personnel
assistant. McDaniels then per-
suaded the Patriots to bring
aboard his old buddy, Caserio,
in the same job.
The two won three Super
Bowls together, with McDaniels
becoming the quarterbacks
coach in 2004 and offensive co-
ordinator in 2005. Caserio
quickly rose up the ladder as a
scout, coach, and personnel di-
rector.
When McDaniels was hired
as Denver’s head coach in 2009,
he brought Ziegler out of the
high school ranks and added
him to his scouting depart-
ment. In 2013, when McDan-
iels was back with the Patriots,
he brought Ziegler and Schup-
linski into the fold.
The quartet has since won
three more Super Bowls togeth-
er, before Schuplinski left forMiami this offseason.
“If you had told me that
these guys would all be really
successful, I wouldn’t be the
least bit surprised,” Priestap
said. “The fact that they happen
to do it in the game they love, I
do have to pinch myself some-
times.”
And they have kept the John
Carroll pipeline flowing.
Patriots tight ends coach
Nick Caley and scout D.J. De-
bick both played at Carroll, in a
later era. Colts assistant special
teams coach Frank Ross, who
also played at Carroll in a later
era, was with the Patriots scout-
ing department for five years.
“I think what we’re probably
the most proud of is when we
recommended somebody, that
person did such an incredible
job of representing what you
represented,” McDaniels said.
“It’s exciting to have some of
these life experiences and share
them with the guys that you
grewupwithandaresomeof
your closest friends.”
They don’t get back to JohnCarroll much, since they’re usu-
ally busy with the Patriots in
the fall. But they send auto-
graphed Brady jerseys and oth-
er Patriots swag to John Carroll
fund-raisers, and contributed
video messages in 2017 when
the Blue Streaks had a 20-year
reunion of the 1997 playoff
team.
The Patriots may revolve
around Brady and Belichick,
but there is no denying the im-
pact that a small Division 3 pro-
gram had in creating the NFL’s
greatest dynasty.
“Whenever we get an oppor-
tunity to get together, we talk
about everything they’ve ac-
complished and we reminisce
about where it started,” Prie-
stap said. “You can’t believe a
handful of your teammates
have accomplished the greatest
accomplishment in pro foot-
ball.”Ben Volin can be reached at
[email protected]. Follow
him on Twitter @BenVolinCOURTESY OF JOHN CARROLL UNIVERSITY
The 1997 John Carroll team featured Dave Ziegler (No. 8, 3rd row, 6th from left); Josh McDaniels (No. 12, 3rd row, 7th
from left); Nick Caserio (No. 18, 3rd row, 4th from right); and London Fletcher (No. 3, 2nd row, 3rd from left).COURTESY JOHN CARROLL UNIVERSITYBefore he ran Patriots player personnel, Nick Caserio (18)
was John Carroll’s quarterback in the 1990s.
BEN VOLIN/GLOBE STAFF
The Patriots have found four staf-
fers from the Division 3 school.
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