Zack Baun stood next to his high school coach and found himself talking about — of all things — the weather.
It wasn’t entirely idle talk for Brown Deer, Wis. It was February. Baun’s wife, Ali, was seven months pregnant at the time. They wouldn’t be staying long, Baun said. It’d be warmer in New Orleans, and Ali wanted to spend the final months before delivering their son in the south.
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Baun was open to staying in Louisiana, Rob Green recalled. But plans change. Baun’s rookie contract with the New Orleans Saints expired a month later. He returned north almost immediately. On the first day of the NFL’s legal tampering window, Baun signed a one-year, $3.5 million deal with the Philadelphia Eagles. A defender who’d lacked a definitive role had found a pathway to playing time as an inside linebacker.
Every executive seemed to have their own vision for Baun when he first left Wisconsin. He’d been a first-team All-American in his final season with the Badgers. He’d been unleashed on the edge and had 12.5 sacks in 2019. Baun distinctly remembers interviewing with the Eagles at the Senior Bowl, sitting next to Connor Barwin, then a special assistant to general manager Howie Roseman, and sensing Philadelphia’s belief in him as an off-ball linebacker.
“I just remember leaving,” Baun said, “and I was like, ‘Dang. I feel like I can go there. I feel like that’s an option.'”
But the Saints picked Baun at No. 74. Only 29 picks later, the Eagles picked Davion Taylor — an off-ball linebacker who’d be released within two years after being plagued by injuries. The Eagles cycled through 14 different starting linebackers over the next four seasons. Baun spent most of those years on special teams, platooning in pass-rush packages with perennial Pro Bowlers Cam Jordan and Demario Davis.
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Sometimes the line is fine between being a gadget or an actual tool. That was the story for Baun, an undisputed athlete who was undersized for the defensive edge (6-3, 225 pounds) but too effective as a rusher to ignore. Such is his fit as an off-ball linebacker in Eagles defensive coordinator Vic Fangio’s scheme. Through two games, Baun has rushed on 22 percent of opposing dropbacks, per TruMedia. His two sacks in the regular-season opener against the Packers remain first on the team. He leads the Eagles with 18 solo tackles while tying the top spot with two run stuffs for no gain.
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“He’s been relentless to the football,” coach Nick Sirianni said last week. “Relentless effort.”
Nowhere is effort more needed for the Eagles than within the defense’s front seven. They have the NFL’s worst run defense (6.4 yards per rush) and the second-worst average yards before contact (2.55). The dismal defense doomed the Eagles in their 22-21 collapse to the Atlanta Falcons on Monday night.
Nowhere is Baun’s new opportunity more fitting than in New Orleans. He’ll return to the Superdome on Sunday. The Eagles must somehow slow down a top-ranked scoring offense (45.5) that’s logging video game numbers under new Saints offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak. A revitalized Alvin Kamara is averaging 5.7 yards per carry and leads the league with four rushing touchdowns.
Baun could at last distinguish himself in the city where he was arguably miscast.
“First of all, in the NFL, everybody’s good,” said Chris Orr, Baun’s roommate at Wisconsin. “But there’s a lot of people you’ll never hear about just because they don’t end up in the right situation. They don’t really get that opportunity to let their talent show. I’m just thankful that he’s getting that now for sure.”
There was a time when Baun didn’t even want to play football anymore.
He’d soured on the sport as a high school freshman. He’d been admittedly “kind of salty” that he wasn’t bumped up to varsity at winless West Bend East. He’d been a slot receiver then, a kid so consumed with basketball that it’s all he really intended to play when his family moved to nearby Brown Deer.
Green was running a weight room session that summer, and he happened upon the field house during open gym. Suddenly, some kid catapulted for a rebound, turned and tomahawked the ball back into the rim.
Green sidled up to Brown Deer’s basketball coach.
Who’s that?
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Zack Baun.
I’m gonna have to get to know this kid.
Green made Baun a deal. “Just come to camp for a week,” he’d said. “If you like it, that’s awesome. If you don’t, I won’t hold it against you.”
Baun started out again at slot. On his first play, Baun housed a post route between two defenders. He stopped in the end zone, turned around, and fired the football back to the quarterback — a 50-yard rope, Green recalled, straight to the chest.
Green’s brother, Andy, the team’s offensive coordinator, approached Baun.
“You ever thought about playing quarterback?”
Too Bunyanesque? There are written records for the absurdity that followed. Baun scored 94 touchdowns in two seasons as a dual-threat quarterback (27 passing, 67 rushing). Insane sequences were common by the guy who doubled as a defensive end, those who saw Baun say. He once sacked a quarterback on one play, struck him into an interception on the next, then, at quarterback, ran left, reversed right and knocked down four defenders on his way to yet another score.
“Running, throwing, hurdling, stiff-arming — every way possible,” said Donovan Lucas, a former wide receiver at Brown Deer. “I’ve seen him go for nine touchdowns in a game against a team in the playoffs. I’ve seen him get 600, 700 yards in a game. I’ve seen him win a game in overtime on offense and defense.”
“So, when I say, like, 100 touchdowns, I had to run to the end zone 100 times in two seasons.”
Chasing down Baun all those times created a lore, a sense that a small town’s legend might never fall.
Lucas later leaned on those moments to encourage an injury-battered Baun the summer before his breakout season at Wisconsin. His touchdowns, his four medals as a sprinter in state track meets, his two state titles in basketball, even the time he was in a dead sprint with another runner in a 200-meter final, only to pull up on the final bend with an injury and finish last in a race he was favored to win. They all pointed to the need for Baun to battle, to push, to bide his time until his big opportunity.
“That’s a testament to his character,” Lucas said. “Because it’s so much tougher to just keep clawing forward, keep clawing forward, keep clawing forward. ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I’m going to just keep going. I’m going to just keep going.’ And I think that he did that.”
Orr was passed out on the couch when his roommate first arrived.
Baun introduced Orr to his mother and siblings. He later introduced Orr to the campus basketball court, where Baun immediately hit a 360-degree windmill dunk. He also introduced Orr, a Texas native, to Wisconsin culture. Cheese curds. (“I’m like, ‘This is cheese sticks,'” Orr said.) Culver’s. (“I’m like, ‘Oh man, I’m definitely getting chunky up here.”) A Milwaukee dance by JSmoove called the “Neck ‘Em.” (“It’s hilarious. Had me crying laughing when he first did it.”)
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Their bond began early. In 2016, Orr suffered a season-ending ACL tear on the first defensive snap of the season. Baun kept Orr in good spirits. Baun and Ali involved Orr in their cooking experiments, a “taste tester” for every concoction they made. Orr returned the favor in 2017 when Baun missed the season after breaking his left foot in preseason camp.
“That support system is what made us get that close,” Orr said. “It’s what made us be able to push each other going up to that last year, and what also made us be able to trust each other that last year. We knew, ‘I don’t need to do too much. He’s gonna win his one-on-one.'”
After two years, Baun and Orr finally were fielded together. Former Wisconsin defensive coordinator Dave Aranda had recruited Baun as an outside linebacker. But Aranda left for LSU in 2016, just as Baun arrived on campus. Justin Wilcox took over the Badgers defense that season and simplified Aranda’s system into one-word calls, Orr said, trying to get his best players on the field as easily as possible. Then Wilcox took California’s head coaching position, and Jim Leonhard was elevated in 2017. The third change helped Baun “shine,” Orr said.
“Leonard’s approach was kind of like, ‘Hey, I’m gonna let my best players do what they do best,'” Orr said. “So, like, we weren’t gonna have Zack dropping in coverage a crazy amount of times. Like, you’re one of our best pass rushers. You’re gonna rush the passer.”
Baun contested this description with a smile.
“I dropped back!” Baun said. “I dropped out! Sometimes. But yeah, it was a lot of pass rush.”
Indeed, Baun rushed on 75.5 percent of total passing snaps in three seasons with the Badgers, according to Pro Football Focus. He started in all 13 games as a junior in 2018, securing just 2.5 sacks and eight tackles for loss.
Bobby April III, then Wisconsin’s outside linebackers coach, was involved in defensive game plans, and he attributed Baun’s slow start to missing that spring with his foot injury. “We didn’t really know what we had going into the season,” April said. But when Baun returned for his senior season, April “had a great sense that he was going to have a heck of a year.”
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“I was going to try to create as many opportunities as I could for him to be involved in making plays,” said April, now Stanford’s defensive coordinator. “I knew that if we gave him shots to get the one-on-ones or be in his own coverage based upon the quarterback reads, that he’d be the guy that makes a play for us.”
Orr can rattle off those 2019 plays easily.
Week 1, South Florida: Baun blindsided the quarterback, forcing the ball into the air, where it was snagged by a defender who scored a touchdown.
“They couldn’t stop him,” Orr said.
Week 3, Michigan: Orr botched an onside kick late in the game, but Baun spared his roommate grief by sealing the game with a turnover-forcing sack-fumble.
“He covered my back, man.”
Week 6, Michigan State: Baun snagged a 34-yard pick-six on a sudden coverage drop.
“That one was, like, he kind of arrived,” April said.
Zack Baun’s image smokes Jordan Love in the backfield. It reverses. Baun smokes the Green Bay Packers quarterback again.
Orr is in control of the film cut-ups. He’s now the linebackers coach at Jackson State. He’s now using his old teammate’s Eagles debut in Sao Paulo as teaching tape to his players on how “to just play fast.”
“I’m telling them guys, ‘I’m like, bro, this dude didn’t care about messing up,'” Orr said. “He just went fast and hunted the ball. Like, a lot of times, guys hesitate. But I wanted to show them that, man, you can just go.”
Orr always envied Baun’s energy. And Baun’s metabolism. Orr knew if he’d ever taken even a sip of a soda, his workout would’ve been toast. Not Baun, though. Lucas says Baun doesn’t get enough credit for his motor. They’d designed an opening basketball play at Brown Deer for every tip-off. Their center would tip it to one of their wings, who’d hurl it to Baun, who was already suspended mid-air somewhere near the rim.
Set Hut!
Two points.
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Baun had to learn how to harness that energy as an off-ball linebacker. He said he “grew a lot as a football player” under Saints linebackers coach Mike Hodges. Baun never played inside linebacker at Wisconsin, save for a few reps in the spring. Fangio threw plenty at Baun upon his arrival in Philadelphia, and he retrained his footing for the defense’s second level and rewired his vision to be aware of everything in front of him. He also called Orr for additional tips.
“It’s a little different just because at linebacker, man, you get flashes of the play and you have to know the complete play,” Orr said. “So you have to know like a hard double team front side is probably gonna be some type of gap scheme. You’re probably gonna get a power (block) or even just like a duo (block) coming that way. So, I remember us talking about that. I know it was hard for him, but man, I knew he was gonna work hard, man. I had no doubt about Zach in my mind, man. He was focused.”
The former roommates pulled back for a moment on that phone call. They allowed themselves to look back at the past, the journey, the unlikelihood that Baun’s best shot in the NFL would be on the inside and not the out.
“Who would have thought?” Baun joked then.
“It’s a growth process,” Baun says now. “And it gets tough at times but you gotta keep your mind just set on like, ‘I’m learning, I’m growing, I’m learning, I’m growing. I’m making mistakes but I’m learning, I’m growing.'”
“And it paid off.”
(Top photo: Brooke Sutton / Getty Images)
