Speaker 1: Before we get started, please rate and review our show
Speaker 1: that helps people find us. On this episode of Sports
Speaker 1: Illustrated Weekly. With NFL preseason upon us and roster cuts looming,
Speaker 1: a lot of players out there are hoping to prove
Speaker 1: themselves right now and stick with their team, including an
Speaker 1: undrafted rookie with the Philadelphia Eagles. Before going to camp
Speaker 1: in Philly, that had been six years since Stephen Allen
Speaker 1: played football. He's best known for what he's done on
Speaker 1: the track, where he's a world class hurdler who also
Speaker 1: recently suffered an unfortunate and controversial outcome at the World
Speaker 1: Championships in Oregon. Our producer Jessica Armoski has the story
Speaker 1: of Alan trying to turn himself into a two sports star.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, John Gonzalez from Sports Illustrated and I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. This is Sports Illustrated Weekly. Alright, Just so,
Speaker 1: training camps are happening, one of them near and dear
Speaker 1: to my heart. The Philadelphia Eagles are at camp and
Speaker 1: they have a player there who I find very interesting,
Speaker 1: Devin Allen. He's in camp with the Eagles. How's it
Speaker 1: going for him so far? Considering he's playing football at
Speaker 1: a high level. For the first time since. I think
Speaker 1: it's going pretty well if you asked him, maybe not
Speaker 1: as well as he would have hoped. I spoke to
Speaker 1: Reuben Frank from NBC Sports Philadelphia. He was talking to
Speaker 1: Devon pretty early on in training camp, and Devin Allen said, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's intense, all right. I think it's just learning how
Speaker 1: to practice again. Um, learning how to play again. I think,
Speaker 1: you know, the nuances are most of him in college,
Speaker 1: and then it's been so long since I've played, right,
Speaker 1: I just gotta remember, you know that the intensity and
Speaker 1: the tempo that all the coaches want and practice and
Speaker 1: then how to practice and you know, get a good
Speaker 1: rep even if we're just in outlets or we're just
Speaker 1: in shells and stuff like that as well. Um, and
Speaker 1: then also getting all the walk through reps I can.
Speaker 1: I think the most frustrating thing for Devon Allen at
Speaker 1: this point is he's leaving a sport for now where
Speaker 1: he is incredibly six tessful, really highly decorated, just known
Speaker 1: as you know, one of the best at what he does,
Speaker 1: and then he gets through training camp and he's pretty
Speaker 1: much like ninth in the pecking order. He hasn't been
Speaker 1: getting a lot of opportunities to show off his skills
Speaker 1: at camp. Here's what Ruben had to say. So, not
Speaker 1: only is he competing against wide receivers who've been doing
Speaker 1: this all their lives without a six year break, he's
Speaker 1: playing against cornerbacks who are some of the best in
Speaker 1: the world and know every trick in the book. And
Speaker 1: pure speed doesn't get you open in the NFL, and
Speaker 1: I think that he is just kind of struggling to
Speaker 1: stand out um, which must be frustrating, especially because he,
Speaker 1: you know, really is coming off a sport where he
Speaker 1: is so well known. So it's wild to me that
Speaker 1: he hasn't played football in six years. He's undrafted. He
Speaker 1: shows up to the Oregon Pro Day, the Eagles take
Speaker 1: a liking to him aside. Is it just the speed?
Speaker 1: What did they see that they wanted to bring him
Speaker 1: into camp? Yeah, so we know that he's fast, obviously,
Speaker 1: and you know, the Eagles general manager Howie Roseman, he's
Speaker 1: kind of thinking outside the box always when he's looking
Speaker 1: for people to sign. Reuben Frank reminded us of Jordan Malatta,
Speaker 1: the rugby player that Howie Roseman signed, you know, back
Speaker 1: in two thousand six. He signed an Olympic skier still
Speaker 1: the only Olympic skier to ever be signed by the
Speaker 1: NFL Jeremy Bloom. So you can imagine that Roseman was
Speaker 1: looking at Alan kind of through that lens as someone
Speaker 1: who maybe isn't necessarily a shoe in, but could bring
Speaker 1: a lot to the team. They did look at film,
Speaker 1: Ruben told me, and you know, it was old film.
Speaker 1: It was from like two thousand fourteen, two thousand sixteen,
Speaker 1: which I kind of thought was funny, and they were impressed.
Speaker 1: You know, you think of a track guy playing football,
Speaker 1: You think of like a fragile, you know, a finesse
Speaker 1: type player with great speed. But they saw a guy
Speaker 1: who didn't back down physically from from defensive backs and
Speaker 1: and had to write mentality, he didn't look like a
Speaker 1: track star playing football. It looked like a football player,
Speaker 1: and I think that's what appealed to them, all right,
Speaker 1: So they go from a skier to a rugby player,
Speaker 1: and now they've got Devin Allen, who, as we know,
Speaker 1: is excellent on the track. He's a three time national
Speaker 1: champion in the one ten hurdles. The timing here really
Speaker 1: works out for Allen, right, because he signs in April.
Speaker 1: He's got the U S Championships in June, He's got
Speaker 1: the World Championships in July, and now he's in camp
Speaker 1: with the Eagles in August. He's got a lot going
Speaker 1: on for Devin Allen. The timing is everything and it
Speaker 1: has worked so well in his favor. He went to
Speaker 1: the US Champs in June, he took third place. The
Speaker 1: top three went to Worlds. It actually came out after
Speaker 1: the race that his dad had passed away the weekend
Speaker 1: of the meet. So he's basically running with this huge
Speaker 1: life thing happening and really hard to tell in the race.
Speaker 1: He still, you know, got third, he qualifies for Worlds,
Speaker 1: and Yeah, he seemed to be just on the up
Speaker 1: and up. With the World Champs in July and Eugene,
Speaker 1: his home stadium, he looked good to contend for a medal.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of fans were expecting him to
Speaker 1: come out and get on the podium. And then, you know,
Speaker 1: his plan was transitioned back to football for the time being.
Speaker 1: See what he could do when he dipped his toes
Speaker 1: into the NFL. He was really set up for a
Speaker 1: successful transition. Yeah, I was excited for him at the
Speaker 1: World Championships. As you mentioned, it's his home track in Eugene, Oregon,
Speaker 1: first time the World Championships had been held in the
Speaker 1: United States, and so everybody, I think, kind of expected
Speaker 1: him to end up on the podium. But man, it
Speaker 1: did not go well for him. Tell everybody what happened
Speaker 1: to Devon Allen at the World Championships in Oregon. It
Speaker 1: did not go well for him. That's I mean, exactly
Speaker 1: as you said. He got through the heats and the semis.
Speaker 1: There was a sense that he didn't quite look like
Speaker 1: himself in those early rounds, but the finals all that matters.
Speaker 1: He gets the line in the final, and I wouldn't
Speaker 1: say that he was a heavy favorite for gold necessarily,
Speaker 1: but you know, this guy really delivers when it matters,
Speaker 1: is um and I think a podium finish was in
Speaker 1: sight for him. The gun goes up, say the gun
Speaker 1: goes off again, calling the runners back to the line.
Speaker 1: A callback gun is jarring obviously for athletes, jarring for fans,
Speaker 1: for people watching in the stadium, for the watching on TV.
Speaker 1: It's just it's kind of this like eerie feeling. You
Speaker 1: know that something bad is coming. You're scanning the line
Speaker 1: for who it could have been. It's late three I
Speaker 1: think now. I've seen a lot of false starts, and
Speaker 1: usually if they're pretty late, you can see them with
Speaker 1: the naked eye. Then if you can't see it in
Speaker 1: real time, you go back and you look at the
Speaker 1: slow mo. This false start was absolutely imperceptible. Even in
Speaker 1: slow motion. What we saw was that the gun went
Speaker 1: off and he got out of the blocks. It was
Speaker 1: incredibly hard to understand end what had just happened, even
Speaker 1: when he watched the footage and come to find out
Speaker 1: why is that pete fall started by a second he
Speaker 1: appeared to be trying to talk to the official at
Speaker 1: the track, uh be trying to reason with him. The
Speaker 1: start went to replay, and there was this thought, Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe he'll run anyway, he'll file a protest later. But
Speaker 1: after a few minutes and the crowd did not like this,
Speaker 1: he walked off the track. His world championships were over.
Speaker 1: Everyone was doing it was a really really intense moment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's such a bummer. I mean like I was. I
Speaker 1: was bummed out for him. A second chest sounds impossible.
Speaker 1: It sounds like this couldn't possibly be something that they
Speaker 1: could measure but apparently they did. That had to be
Speaker 1: immensely frustrating for him. No, so frustrating. And it's even
Speaker 1: more frustrating when you kind of dig into this rule
Speaker 1: and if it seems arbitrary, that's because it is, I
Speaker 1: think we can say. So. The idea is you want
Speaker 1: to have a fast time between when you hear the
Speaker 1: gun and when you actually push out of the blocks,
Speaker 1: but not too fast because if it's too fast, then
Speaker 1: there's a chance that you ignored the gun and just
Speaker 1: went early, and that could impact obviously your race unfairly.
Speaker 1: So I was like, this rule makes no sense. Where
Speaker 1: did it come from? Why does it exist? And I
Speaker 1: ended up speaking to Steve Magnus, who's an expert on
Speaker 1: health and human performance. He's coached a lot of pro
Speaker 1: athletes over the years, and come to find out this
Speaker 1: rule was actually developed in the sixties when timing mechanisms
Speaker 1: were not the same as they are now, and it
Speaker 1: wasn't until the mid nineties when World Athletics, which is
Speaker 1: the international governing body for track and field, said yep,
Speaker 1: this is the official standard. Here's Steve. And to back
Speaker 1: that up, they had a study that only had eight
Speaker 1: amateur finish sprinters in it that said, up, no one
Speaker 1: reacted faster than than point one. Oh, so this is
Speaker 1: this is the new standard. So the fact that this
Speaker 1: rule was codified into existence based on a study with
Speaker 1: eight amateur sprinters, and now suddenly pro runners around the
Speaker 1: world are being held to it, obviously, you can see
Speaker 1: why it's pretty frustrating. Devon Allen was the third pretty
Speaker 1: big name DQ in this meet. A lot of people
Speaker 1: started digging into the starting data and the timing data
Speaker 1: in Eugene specifically. Yeah, so if you look at the
Speaker 1: data um and compare it to past World championships across
Speaker 1: spread events, they're all reacting a hundred. They're too faster
Speaker 1: than they normally would. So the average, the median is
Speaker 1: all faster reactions. In fact, I was looking the other
Speaker 1: day and normally we only have, you know, maybe a
Speaker 1: handful of reaction times that are really close to that
Speaker 1: point one response, and in this track meet we've had
Speaker 1: something like thirty. Now for their part, World Athletics came
Speaker 1: out and was like, look, everything's okay with the timing,
Speaker 1: but we'll look at the rule in the future. We'll
Speaker 1: take it into consideration in the future. Now a lot
Speaker 1: of people saw that as them conceding to maybe this
Speaker 1: rule isn't fair, maybe we should revisit it. But that
Speaker 1: didn't change a lot for Devon Allen. The race had
Speaker 1: already been one, the medals had been awarded, and there
Speaker 1: was this really somber shot of Devon watching the race
Speaker 1: from the call room, just sitting on like a folding
Speaker 1: chair watching the race. And it was pretty heartbreaking to
Speaker 1: know that because of this rule, because he was a
Speaker 1: really good starter, but a little bit too good on
Speaker 1: this day, he was out of contention for a medal.
Speaker 1: That's insane, Jess. I mean, you call it heartbreaking. I
Speaker 1: think that's exactly right. If that had been me, I
Speaker 1: would never get over it. I would think about it
Speaker 1: for the rest of my life. And Devon Allen, now
Speaker 1: he's a Eagles training camp and he's a little bit
Speaker 1: removed from it, but he's never going to be clear
Speaker 1: of what happened in Eugene, and he's still being asked
Speaker 1: about it even at Eagles camp. Right, What did he
Speaker 1: have to say about what happened at the World Championships. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he spoke to Reuben Frank at training camp and he
Speaker 1: said when he heard the callback On. Obviously, his first
Speaker 1: feeling was panic. I know the rules, right, you can't.
Speaker 1: You're not supposed to be able to run into protests
Speaker 1: unless there's a problem with the equipment or something you know,
Speaker 1: outside the external to start, like crowd noise or somebody
Speaker 1: making noise on the field or you know, pull volt
Speaker 1: or shopping or throwing whatever like that. Um, so you
Speaker 1: know it's pretty much just panic right away. But the
Speaker 1: thing is is, because of the timing, he didn't really
Speaker 1: have a chance to let it get to him so much.
Speaker 1: He didn't have a chance to stew over it. He
Speaker 1: had to report for camp and his focus had to
Speaker 1: change no matter what had happened at the meat. So
Speaker 1: there's this sense that Devin Allen is an incredible hurdler.
Speaker 1: We know this, you know, Reuben and I were chatting
Speaker 1: about how Devon Allen could roll out of bed in
Speaker 1: the middle of the night and run in the low
Speaker 1: thirteen for the one ten hurdles, just to give you
Speaker 1: an idea. The world record is currently twelve eight, so
Speaker 1: that's really fast. And there's this idea that you know,
Speaker 1: not that hurtling comes easy to him, but she's really
Speaker 1: good at it. He kind of sails through it. He
Speaker 1: does really well and he wanted a new challenge and
Speaker 1: that is why he showed up at Eagles training camp
Speaker 1: ready to go and ready to see what he could
Speaker 1: do in a completely different kind of way. All Right,
Speaker 1: so he's in camp with the Eagles. I'm rooting for him.
Speaker 1: I want something good to happen for Devon Allen, especially
Speaker 1: after what happened at the World Championships. Just but as
Speaker 1: we know, this is kind of a long shot. He's undrafted,
Speaker 1: he hasn't played football in six seasons. But the good
Speaker 1: news is the Eagles wide receivers after A. J. Brown
Speaker 1: and DeVante Smith are not great, so he has a chance.
Speaker 1: What are his prospects looking like? What are the guys
Speaker 1: who you talked to in Phillys saying about Devon Allen? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I got the sense in talking to people about this
Speaker 1: that it's unlikely that a permanent roster spot will become
Speaker 1: Devan Allen's, but it's not impossible. Ruben Frank thinks that
Speaker 1: there is a potential that he could get a spot
Speaker 1: on the practice squad. Still pretty lucrative and because of
Speaker 1: these new rules under COVID, teams can pull up as
Speaker 1: we know two players each game from the practice squad,
Speaker 1: so he has the potential to be called up and
Speaker 1: get a couple of game checks, which pretty good deal
Speaker 1: for Devon Allen. The other thing is, again, timing is
Speaker 1: so working out for him. Football wraps up in February,
Speaker 1: indoor track really starts ramping up in February, and you
Speaker 1: can bet that you're going to see him back on
Speaker 1: the track. He's not done with track. He wants to
Speaker 1: obviously keep going, but in terms of doing both sports,
Speaker 1: timing is really on his side. It would be great
Speaker 1: to see him back on the track. I'm glad that
Speaker 1: he's not abandoning that sport for football. Practice squad probably
Speaker 1: is the best case scenario for him. So fingers crossed
Speaker 1: on that one. As we know, a preseason is underway.
Speaker 1: The Eagles just played the Jets in their first preseason game.
Speaker 1: How did Devin Allen do tell me he had a
Speaker 1: great game on I was really hoping that I would
Speaker 1: have an amazing story for you, an amazing answer to
Speaker 1: this question. Devon Allen played the best game of his life.
Speaker 1: He stood out, all eyes were on him. That didn't happen.
Speaker 1: I think the game was decent for Devon Allen. He
Speaker 1: only played eight snaps on offense and seven on special teams,
Speaker 1: not a ton of playing time if you're looking at
Speaker 1: that as an indicator of his future with the Eagles.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a game where he stood out that much.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, you know, he was out
Speaker 1: there in an Eagles uniform playing, and I think we
Speaker 1: just have to wait and see what happens with these
Speaker 1: roster cuts. I'm interested in this story just because it
Speaker 1: has so many layers. I'm interested in it because he's,
Speaker 1: you know, a track superstar who's trying his hand in
Speaker 1: football again. So just from a journalism standpoint, I'm fascinated.
Speaker 1: And then also it's got that hometown flavor for me.
Speaker 1: But are Eagles fans also curious about Devon Allen? What
Speaker 1: do they think of them? That's what I wanted to know.
Speaker 1: I asked Ruben, if you know Devin Allen was welcome
Speaker 1: to Philly with open arms by those fans. Never happened before?
Speaker 1: He said, not quite. Um, you know, the Eagles have
Speaker 1: a wide receiver at camp who is turning a lot
Speaker 1: of heads. Britain Covey from Utah really interesting story, and
Speaker 1: Ruben told me that his star is potentially starting to
Speaker 1: shine a little bit brighter than Devin Allen is getting
Speaker 1: a little bit more attention. I will say that in
Speaker 1: the preseason game against the Jets, Brittain Covey reportedly tore
Speaker 1: some ligaments in his hand. He may or may not
Speaker 1: be out for some time because of that. Could this
Speaker 1: be a chance for Devin Allen's star to rise? The
Speaker 1: answer to that right now is we'll see. Maybe we
Speaker 1: don't know. But for me as a track fan, sure
Speaker 1: he may not be the talk of the town in Philly,
Speaker 1: but I'm excited to watch him play. I want to see,
Speaker 1: you know, how this translates over to the NFL, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to definitely keep watching Alright, just this was great.
Speaker 1: I am rooting for Devon Allen. I hope it works
Speaker 1: out for him in a way that it didn't work
Speaker 1: out for him at the World Championships. Excellent reporting by you.
Speaker 1: Thanks for this, Yeah, thanks for having me on special
Speaker 1: Thanks to Ruben Frank and Dave zan Garrow from NBC
Speaker 1: Sports Philly for passing along Devon Allen's interview audio from
Speaker 1: Eagles training camp. Thanks for listening, and a reminder to
Speaker 1: please rate and review the show that helps people find us.
Speaker 1: Sports Illustrated Weekly is a production of Sports Illustrated and
Speaker 1: I Heeart Radio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
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Speaker 1: you get your favorite shows. This episode of Sports Illustrated
Speaker 1: Weekly was produced by Jordan Rizzieri, Jessica Armoski, and Isaac Lee,
Speaker 1: who was also our sound engineer. Our senior producers are
Speaker 1: Dan Bloom and Harry sward Out. Our executive producers are
Speaker 1: Scott Rody and me John Gonzalez. Our theme song is
Speaker 1: by Nolan Schneider and if you've stuck around this long,
Speaker 1: we leave you with this. Yeah. Milrose when it was
Speaker 1: at the Garden was the greatest. When I started going
Speaker 1: to mill Rose, I mean everybody guys were smoking, like
Speaker 1: this cloud of cigarettes smoke, and like you know, Rick
Speaker 1: Walhooter's out there running like three fifty seven. It was unbelievable.