Dominant Pro Day shows what Gateway grad Jaquan Brisker can do

STATE COLLEGE — It didn’t really hit him until he sat down in his seat on the plane, closed his eyes, and couldn’t focus on the place he’d be landing.

Jaquan Brisker could only focus on where he had been.

In a few hours, he’d be training for the NFL Draft, a lifelong dream for more than a dozen players who participated Thursday in Penn State’s annual Pro Day at Holuba Hall. But for a young player who came from humble beginnings in Pittsburgh, someone who didn’t even put himself on the map until he completed two dominant seasons under head coach Mark Duda at Lackawanna College, the draft and a pro day where the eyes of coaches and general managers from all 32 NFL teams fixed on him, a day like this didn’t always seem as close or as realistic as it turned out to be.

“I really took it all in,” Brisker said of those moments on the plane. “It was like, I’m really going to go train for this.

“Coming from Lackawanna, and where I’ve been, it was just very different. I finally made that trip to go train and do what I’m supposed to be doing. So I felt like it was just very emotional. But I was ready to go.”

On a day when blistering 40-yard dashes were run, and impressive amounts of weights were lifted, few impressed onlookers more than Penn State’s 6-foot-1 safety.

The 206-pound Gateway graduate ran a 4.43-second 40, showed off his quickness with a 4.19-second pro shuttle, led the way with a 6.91-second L shuttle, and looked physically impressive enough to back up his 22 reps of 225 pounds on the bench press at the NFL Combine in Indianapolis earlier this month; that’s a number that rivaled most linebackers.

But Brisker said his work on the vertical jump impressed him most.

Brisker jumped 38 1/2 inches Thursday, four inches higher than his jump at the combine.

At Lucas Oil Stadium, back tightness suffered during the bench press limited what he could do elsewhere, but he said he wanted to do most of the workouts he planned to do then in front of NFL scouts.

“I’m a competitor,” Brisker said.

Discretion may have been the better part of valor that day, as his results slumped in events like the vertical jump, where he recorded marks in the 37-to-38-inch range during training. Thursday, Brisker bettered even those training marks.

“I was very disappointed I couldn’t perform at the combine,” he said. “Just looking at the safeties and corners there, I felt like it would be a different story if I did everything. So just coming out here, it was a step forward.”

The NFL seems closer than ever now for Brisker, who spent a good part of Thursday chatting about his future with representatives from the New Orleans Saints and Buffalo Bills. He talked with plenty of other teams, including his hometown Pittsburgh Steelers, in Indianapolis.

Those interviews will be perhaps more important for Brisker than the pro day results.

Brisker returned to Penn State for a final season in 2021, not hoping to improve his work in the drills, but to show he could lead a team.

He demonstrated that to the Nittany Lions, serving as an emotional leader last fall. But, he wants to show interested NFL teams what he is most proud of, what he has shown since his days at Lackawanna: That he’ll do what the team needs. That he’ll sacrifice. That he can be an example.

“I showed them that I know the game of football,” Brisker said. “I know what my team is doing every play, so I feel like that really shocked them.”