Hlas: Not easy, but Hawkeye seniors try to put NFL thoughts aside

TAMPA, Fla. — They're in an NFL city. They're playing Monday in an NFL stadium.

They are C.J. Beathard, LeShun Daniels, Jaleel Johnson, Desmond King and George Kittle, and they are the most-likely Iowa Hawkeyes to be in the NFL next season. The first parts of their job auditions end Monday at Raymond James Stadium when their college careers end with an Outback Bowl game against Florida.

After that, things get even more serious.

'No, not at this point right now,' quarterback Beathard said Thursday when asked if he is thinking at all about the NFL.

Then he later conceded he wants to play pro football 'very badly. That's been my dream since I was very young. That's a huge goal of mine.'

Beathard will join cornerback King and defensive tackle Johnson in Mobile, Ala., on the last week of January as they participate in the Senior Bowl. Tight end Kittle and running back Daniels will try to hook invitations to the NFL Combine in February — both will surely get one — and go from there.

'It's there (in his mind) because it's so close now,' said tight end Kittle, 'but I've tried my hardest to take it a day at a time. Coach (LeVar) Woods helped me keep my focus on still being a Hawkeye. I know it's there but I try not to let it distract me.'

'I can worry about the NFL stuff after the 2nd,' running back Daniels said. But he admitted he's thinking about playing in the pros 'maybe a little bit more than I did during the season … but I'm focused in doing whatever I can out there with my teammates so we can get a victory in obviously my last football game at the University of Iowa.'

They're thinking about the NFL and have been for a while. It's like knowing you're going to start a bigger and more-demanding job soon while you're still at your current gig. You can't help but think about it.

Cornerback King is a possible first-round pick, perhaps a probable one. If you want to know if Florida's defense is for real, junior Gator cornerback Teez Tabor is ranked ahead of King in some NFL mock drafts. But King's a big-time pro prospect, and we all know it.

The other aforementioned four seniors? There are no guarantees, though it's especially hard not to envision defensive tackle Johnson getting drafted come May, and not late in the seven-round affair, either.

Daniels says there are four surefire pros in his senior class.

'Desmond, Jaleel, C.J. and George,' he said.

Why Beathard? 'I just feel he strives for excellence in everything that he does,' Daniels said, 'and he's always willing to put the team first no matter what the situation.'

Why Kittle? 'I think he does an excellent job blocking in the run game and obviously he's a mismatch in the passing game with his size and his speed. … I think that's something that's going to carry him through to the next level.'

What does the 1,000-yard rusher think about his own chances of making an NFL roster?

'I'm extremely confident in myself,' Daniels said. 'I believe in my abilities, that I've got the right mental makeup to be mentally tough to go out there and give a team all I have.'

It's a tough racket, though. Twenty-four running backs were spread across the 32 NFL teams in the league's 2016 draft, and three were fullbacks.

Only 11 tight ends were tabbed, and six were in the sixth- or seventh-rounds. But Kittle has something in his pocket besides his own considerable skills. That's Iowa's history of having NFL-ready tight ends under Kirk Ferentz.

Kittle isn't coy about it. He wants to follow the footsteps of Dallas Clark, Scott Chandler, Brandon Myers, Tony Moeaki and C.J. Fiedorowicz, all of whom went from tight end at Iowa to multiyear pro careers.

'I don't want to say it's everything,' Kittle said. 'It's not. But it means a whole bunch.

'Football's been part of my life since I was a baby born on a Wisconsin football Saturday (in Madison). It's hard to picture life without football, trying to keep football in my life as long as possible.'

That's it in a nutshell. These are people who play a sport you might consider borderline insane if you weren't so used to seeing it. None ever seem to want to stop.