0:00

Before we get started, please rate and review our

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show that helps people find us. On

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this episode of Sports Illustrated Weekly. With

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NFL preseason upon us and roster cuts

0:13

looming, a lot of players out there are hoping

0:15

to prove themselves right now and stick with their

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team, including an undrafted

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rookie with the Philadelphia Eagles. Before

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going to camp in Philly, that had been six

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years since Stephen Allen played football. He's

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best known for what he's done on the track, where

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he's a world class hurdler who

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also recently suffered an unfortunate

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and controversial outcome at the World

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Championships in Oregon. Our

0:38

producer Jessica Armoski has the story of

0:40

Alan trying to turn himself into a two

0:42

sports star. I'm your

0:45

host, John Gonzalez from Sports

0:47

Illustrated and I Heart Radio. This

0:49

is Sports Illustrated Weekly. Alright,

0:53

Just so, training camps are happening,

0:56

one of them near and dear to my heart. The Philadelphia

0:58

Eagles are at camp and they have a player there

1:01

who I find very interesting, Devin

1:03

Allen. He's in camp with the Eagles.

1:06

How's it going for him so far? Considering

1:08

he's playing football at a high level. For the first

1:10

time since. I

1:13

think it's going pretty well if you

1:15

asked him, maybe not as

1:17

well as he would have hoped. I

1:21

spoke to Reuben Frank from NBC

1:23

Sports Philadelphia. He was talking to Devon

1:26

pretty early on in training camp, and

1:28

Devin Allen said, yeah, it's intense, all

1:31

right. I think it's just learning how to practice again.

1:33

Um, learning how to play again. I think, you know, the

1:36

nuances are most of him in college, and then it's

1:38

been so long since I've played, right, I just gotta remember,

1:41

you know that the intensity and the tempo that all

1:43

the coaches want and practice and then how to practice

1:45

and you know, get a good rep even if

1:47

we're just in outlets or we're just in shells and stuff

1:49

like that as well. Um, and then also getting all

1:51

the walk through reps I can. I think the most

1:54

frustrating thing for Devon Allen at this point

1:56

is he's leaving a sport for now where

1:58

he is incredibly six tessful, really

2:00

highly decorated, just known as

2:03

you know, one of the best at what he does, and then

2:05

he gets through training camp and he's pretty

2:07

much like ninth in the pecking order.

2:10

He hasn't been getting a lot of opportunities to

2:12

show off his skills at camp. Here's

2:17

what Ruben had to say. So, not only

2:19

is he competing against wide receivers who've been doing

2:21

this all their lives without a six year

2:23

break, he's playing against

2:25

cornerbacks who are some of the best

2:27

in the world and know every

2:29

trick in the book. And pure speed

2:32

doesn't get you open in the NFL,

2:35

and I think that he is just kind of struggling

2:37

to stand out um, which must

2:39

be frustrating, especially because he, you

2:42

know, really is coming off a sport where he is

2:44

so well known. So it's

2:46

wild to me that he hasn't played football in

2:48

six years. He's undrafted.

2:50

He shows up to the Oregon Pro Day,

2:53

the Eagles take a liking to him

2:55

aside. Is it just the speed? What did they see

2:57

that they wanted to bring him into camp? Yeah,

3:00

so we know that he's fast, obviously, and

3:03

you know, the Eagles general manager Howie Roseman,

3:06

he's kind of thinking outside the box

3:08

always when he's looking for people to sign.

3:11

Reuben Frank reminded us of

3:13

Jordan Malatta, the rugby player that

3:15

Howie Roseman signed, you know, back in two

3:17

thousand six. He signed an Olympic skier

3:20

still the only Olympic skier to ever

3:22

be signed by the NFL Jeremy Bloom.

3:25

So you can imagine that Roseman was looking

3:27

at Alan kind of through that lens as

3:29

someone who maybe isn't

3:31

necessarily a shoe in, but could bring a

3:33

lot to the team. They did look at film,

3:36

Ruben told me, and you know, it was old film.

3:38

It was from like two thousand fourteen, two thousand sixteen,

3:40

which I kind of thought was funny, and they were impressed.

3:43

You know, you think of a track guy playing football,

3:45

You think of like a fragile,

3:49

you know, a finesse type player with

3:51

great speed. But they saw a guy who

3:53

didn't back down physically from

3:55

from defensive backs and and had to write

3:58

mentality, he didn't look like a track

4:00

star playing football. It looked like a football player,

4:02

and I think that's what appealed to them, all right, So they go

4:04

from a skier to a rugby player, and now they've

4:06

got Devin Allen, who, as we know, is excellent on

4:08

the track. He's a three time national champion in

4:11

the one ten hurdles. The timing here

4:13

really works out for Allen, right, because he signs

4:15

in April. He's got the U S Championships

4:17

in June, He's got the World Championships in July,

4:20

and now he's in camp with the

4:22

Eagles in August. He's got a lot going on for Devin

4:24

Allen. The timing is everything

4:26

and it has worked so well in his favor. He

4:31

went to the US Champs in June, he

4:33

took third place. The top three went to

4:35

Worlds. It actually came out

4:37

after the race that his dad

4:40

had passed away the weekend of the meet.

4:42

So he's basically running with

4:44

this huge life thing happening

4:46

and really hard to tell in the race.

4:49

He still, you know, got third, he

4:51

qualifies for Worlds, and Yeah, he

4:53

seemed to be just on the up and up. With the

4:55

World Champs in July and Eugene,

4:58

his home stadium,

5:00

he looked good to contend

5:02

for a medal. I think a lot of fans were expecting

5:04

him to come out and get on the podium. And

5:07

then, you know, his plan was transitioned

5:09

back to football for the time being. See

5:12

what he could do when he dipped his toes into the NFL.

5:14

He was really set up for a successful

5:16

transition. Yeah, I was excited

5:19

for him at the World Championships.

5:21

As you mentioned, it's his home track in Eugene,

5:24

Oregon, first time the World Championships had been held

5:26

in the United States, and so everybody,

5:28

I think, kind of expected him to end

5:30

up on the podium. But man, it

5:32

did not go well for him. Tell everybody what happened

5:35

to Devon Allen at the World Championships

5:38

in Oregon. It did not go

5:40

well for him. That's I mean, exactly as you said.

5:42

He got through the heats and the semis.

5:45

There was a sense that he didn't quite look

5:47

like himself in those early rounds, but

5:49

the finals all that matters. He gets the line in

5:51

the final, and I wouldn't

5:53

say that he was a heavy favorite for gold

5:56

necessarily, but you know, this

5:58

guy really delivers when it matters, is

6:00

um and I think a podium finish was in

6:02

sight for him. The gun

6:04

goes up, say the

6:12

gun goes off again, calling the runners

6:15

back to the line. A callback gun

6:17

is jarring obviously for

6:19

athletes, jarring for fans, for

6:21

people watching in the stadium, for the watching on TV.

6:24

It's just it's kind of this like eerie feeling.

6:26

You know that something bad is coming. You're

6:29

scanning the line for who it could have been. It's

6:32

late three I think now.

6:36

I've seen a lot of false starts, and

6:38

usually if they're pretty late, you can see

6:41

them with the naked eye. Then

6:43

if you can't see it in real time, you go back and you look

6:45

at the slow mo. This false

6:47

start was absolutely imperceptible.

6:50

Even in slow motion. What we saw

6:52

was that the gun went off and he got out

6:54

of the blocks. It was

6:57

incredibly hard to

6:59

understand end what had just happened,

7:01

even when he watched the footage and come to find

7:03

out why is that pete fall

7:06

started by a second he

7:08

appeared to be trying to talk

7:10

to the official at the track, uh

7:12

be trying to reason with him. The start

7:15

went to replay,

7:17

and there was this thought, Okay, maybe he'll run

7:19

anyway, he'll file a protest later. But

7:22

after a few minutes and the crowd

7:24

did not like this, he walked off the track.

7:26

His world championships were over. Everyone

7:29

was doing it was a really really

7:31

intense moment. Yeah, that's such a bummer.

7:33

I mean like I was. I was bummed

7:36

out for him. A second

7:38

chest sounds impossible. It sounds like this

7:40

couldn't possibly be something that they

7:42

could measure but apparently they did. That

7:44

had to be immensely

7:46

frustrating for him. No, so

7:49

frustrating. And it's even more frustrating when you kind

7:51

of dig into this rule and

7:54

if it seems arbitrary, that's because

7:56

it is, I think we can say.

7:59

So. The idea is you want

8:01

to have a fast time between when you hear the gun

8:03

and when you actually push out of the blocks,

8:06

but not too fast because if it's too fast,

8:08

then there's a chance that you ignored

8:10

the gun and just went early, and that could impact

8:12

obviously your race unfairly. So

8:16

I was like, this rule makes no sense.

8:18

Where did it come from? Why does it exist? And

8:20

I ended up speaking to Steve Magnus, who's

8:23

an expert on health and human performance. He's

8:25

coached a lot of pro athletes over the years,

8:27

and come to find out this rule

8:29

was actually developed in the sixties when

8:32

timing mechanisms were not

8:34

the same as they are now, and it

8:36

wasn't until the mid nineties when World Athletics,

8:38

which is the international governing body for track and

8:40

field, said yep, this is

8:42

the official standard. Here's

8:45

Steve. And to back that up, they

8:48

had a study that only had eight

8:50

amateur finish sprinters

8:53

in it that said, up, no one reacted

8:55

faster than than point one. Oh, so

8:57

this is this is the new standard. So

9:00

the fact that this rule was codified into

9:02

existence based on a study with eight

9:05

amateur sprinters, and

9:08

now suddenly pro runners around the world

9:10

are being held to it, obviously, you

9:12

can see why it's pretty frustrating. Devon

9:14

Allen was the third pretty big name

9:16

DQ in this meet. A lot of people started

9:19

digging into the starting data and the timing

9:21

data in Eugene specifically. Yeah,

9:23

so if you look at the data um

9:26

and compare it to past World championships

9:29

across spread events, they're all

9:32

reacting a hundred. They're too faster

9:34

than they normally would. So the average,

9:36

the median is all faster reactions.

9:39

In fact, I was looking the other day

9:42

and normally we only have,

9:45

you know, maybe a handful of

9:47

reaction times that are really close to that

9:49

point one response, and

9:51

in this track meet we've had something

9:53

like thirty. Now

9:56

for their part, World Athletics came out

9:58

and was like, look, everything's okay

10:00

with the timing, but we'll look at the rule

10:03

in the future. We'll take it into consideration

10:05

in the future. Now a lot of people saw

10:07

that as them conceding to

10:10

maybe this rule isn't fair, maybe we

10:12

should revisit it. But that

10:14

didn't change a lot for Devon Allen. The race had already

10:16

been one, the medals had been awarded,

10:18

and there was this really somber shot

10:21

of Devon watching the race

10:23

from the call room, just sitting on like a

10:26

folding chair watching the race. And it was pretty

10:29

heartbreaking to know that because

10:31

of this rule, because he was a

10:33

really good starter, but a little bit too

10:35

good on this day, he was out of contention

10:38

for a medal. That's insane, Jess. I mean, you call

10:40

it heartbreaking. I think that's exactly right. If that

10:42

had been me, I would never get over

10:44

it. I would think about it for the rest of my life.

10:46

And Devon Allen, now he's a Eagles

10:48

training camp and he's a

10:50

little bit removed from it, but he's never

10:53

going to be clear

10:55

of what happened in Eugene, and he's still being

10:57

asked about it even at Eagles

11:00

camp. Right, What did he have to say about what happened

11:02

at the World Championships. Yeah, he spoke to Reuben

11:04

Frank at training camp and he said when

11:06

he heard the callback On. Obviously, his first

11:08

feeling was panic. I know

11:10

the rules, right, you can't. You're not supposed to be able to run

11:12

into protests unless there's a problem

11:14

with the equipment or something you know, outside

11:17

the external to start, like crowd noise or

11:21

somebody making noise on the field or you know,

11:23

pull volt or shopping or throwing whatever like that.

11:25

Um, so you know it's pretty much just panic

11:27

right away. But the thing

11:30

is is, because of the timing, he didn't

11:32

really have a chance to let it get to him

11:34

so much. He didn't have a chance to stew over it. He had

11:37

to report for camp and his focus

11:40

had to change no matter what had happened

11:42

at the meat. So there's

11:44

this sense that Devin

11:46

Allen is an incredible hurdler. We

11:49

know this, you know, Reuben and

11:51

I were chatting about how Devon Allen could roll

11:53

out of bed in the middle of the night and

11:56

run in the low thirteen for

11:58

the one ten hurdles, just to give you an idea. The world

12:00

record is currently twelve eight, so

12:02

that's really fast. And there's this

12:04

idea that you know, not that hurtling comes easy

12:06

to him, but she's really good

12:09

at it. He kind of sails through it. He does really

12:11

well and he wanted a

12:13

new challenge and that is why he

12:15

showed up at Eagles training camp ready

12:17

to go and ready to see what he could do in a completely

12:20

different kind of way. All Right, so he's

12:22

in camp with the Eagles. I'm rooting for

12:24

him. I want something good to happen for Devon

12:27

Allen, especially after what happened at the World

12:29

Championships. Just but as we know, this

12:31

is kind of a long shot. He's undrafted, he hasn't

12:33

played football in six seasons. But the

12:35

good news is the Eagles wide receivers after A. J.

12:37

Brown and DeVante Smith are not great, so

12:40

he has a chance. What are his prospects

12:42

looking like? What are the guys who you talked

12:44

to in Phillys saying about Devon Allen? Yeah?

12:47

I got the sense in talking to people about

12:49

this that it's unlikely

12:52

that a permanent roster spot will become

12:54

Devan Allen's, but

12:58

it's not impossible. Ruben Frank

13:00

thinks that there is a potential

13:02

that he could get a spot on the practice squad. Still

13:05

pretty lucrative and because of these

13:07

new rules under COVID, teams can pull up

13:09

as we know two players each game

13:11

from the practice squad, so he has the potential

13:14

to be called up and get a couple of game checks,

13:16

which pretty good deal for Devon

13:18

Allen. The other thing is, again, timing

13:21

is so working out for him. Football

13:23

wraps up in February, indoor track

13:26

really starts ramping up in February,

13:28

and you can bet that you're going to see him back on

13:30

the track. He's not done with track.

13:33

He wants to obviously keep going, but

13:35

in terms of doing both sports, timing

13:37

is really on his side. It

13:40

would be great to see him back on the track. I'm glad

13:42

that he's not abandoning that sport for football.

13:45

Practice squad probably is the

13:47

best case scenario for him. So fingers

13:49

crossed on that one. As we know, a

13:52

preseason is underway. The Eagles just

13:54

played the Jets in their first preseason game.

13:57

How did Devin Allen do tell me he had a great game

14:00

on I was really hoping that I

14:02

would have an amazing story for you,

14:04

an amazing answer to this question. Devon Allen

14:06

played the best game of his life.

14:09

He stood out, all

14:12

eyes were on him. That didn't

14:14

happen. I think the game was decent

14:17

for Devon Allen. He only played eight snaps

14:19

on offense and seven on special teams,

14:22

not a ton of playing time if

14:24

you're looking at that as an indicator of his future

14:26

with the Eagles. It wasn't a game where

14:28

he stood out that much.

14:31

But at the same time, you know, he was out

14:33

there in an Eagles uniform playing, and I

14:35

think we just have to wait and see what happens with these

14:37

roster cuts. I'm interested

14:39

in this story just because it has so many

14:41

layers. I'm interested in it because

14:43

he's, you know, a track superstar who's

14:46

trying his hand in football again. So

14:48

just from a journalism standpoint,

14:50

I'm fascinated. And then also it's

14:52

got that hometown flavor for me. But

14:55

are Eagles fans also curious about

14:58

Devon Allen? What do they think of them? That's what I

15:00

wanted to know. I asked Ruben, if you

15:02

know Devin Allen was welcome to Philly with open

15:04

arms by those fans. Never

15:08

happened before? He said, not

15:11

quite. Um, you know, the

15:13

Eagles have a wide receiver at camp

15:15

who is turning a lot of heads. Britain Covey

15:17

from Utah really interesting story,

15:20

and Ruben told me that his star is

15:22

potentially starting to shine a little bit brighter

15:24

than Devin Allen is getting a little bit more attention.

15:27

I will say that in the preseason

15:30

game against the Jets, Brittain Covey reportedly

15:32

tore some ligaments in his hand. He

15:35

may or may not be out for some

15:37

time because of that. Could this be

15:39

a chance for Devin Allen's star to rise?

15:42

The answer to that right now is we'll

15:45

see. Maybe we don't

15:47

know. But for me as a track fan, sure

15:49

he may not be the talk of the town in Philly, but I'm

15:51

excited to watch him play. I want to see,

15:54

you know, how this translates over to the NFL,

15:56

and I'm going to definitely keep watching Alright,

15:58

just this was great. I am rooting

16:00

for Devon Allen. I hope it works out for him

16:03

in a way that it didn't work out for him at the World Championships.

16:05

Excellent reporting by you. Thanks for this, Yeah,

16:08

thanks for having me on special

16:13

Thanks to Ruben Frank and Dave zan Garrow

16:15

from NBC Sports Philly for passing along

16:17

Devon Allen's interview audio from Eagles

16:19

training camp. Thanks

16:21

for listening, and a reminder to please rate and review

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the show that helps people find us. Sports

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Illustrated Weekly is a production of Sports Illustrated

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you get your favorite shows. This

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episode of Sports Illustrated Weekly was produced by

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engineer. Our senior producers

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are Dan Bloom and Harry sward Out. Our

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16:52

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you've stuck around this long, we leave you with

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this. Yeah. Milrose

17:04

when it was at the Garden was the greatest. When

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I started going to mill Rose, I mean everybody

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guys were smoking, like this

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cloud of cigarettes smoke, and

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like you know, Rick Walhooter's

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out there running like three fifty seven. It

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was unbelievable.