The draft process at times can be lonely.
Having put their college careers behind them, players spend months preparing for their own individual futures. With that said, opportunities like the Senior Bowl and Combine allow players to mingle with their peers from other teams.
But rarely, if ever, will newly-formed friends end up on the same squad.
Luckily for Forrest Lamp and Dan Feeney, the opposite happened. As fate would have it, the pair are now roommates at rookie mini camp.
"Forrest is a pretty good roommate," Feeney said. "He's pretty solid so far. He's (also) pretty clean! No issues with that. We were at the Senior Bowl together, and the Combine, so we got to know each other pretty well. It was pretty cool when we both ended up on the same team. I'm excited to work with him."
"Dan reminds me a lot of a couple of my teammates back at Western," Lamp explained. "We get along pretty well. It makes it a lot easier when you know somebody. I got drafted in the second and saw Dan get drafted right after me. As soon as (he was drafted), I texted him (saying), 'Great to be teammates!' I got his number from the Senior Bowl and Combine. We were already pretty good friends."
While they're close, they're also competing and weren't afraid to give a scouting report on one another.
"(Feeney's) good," Lamp said. "He wouldn't be here if he wasn't."
"I think (Lamp has) a lot of different intricacies to his game," Feeney mentioned. "He's strong, has heavy hands and good, athletic feet. I think with Coach Meyer's techniques he'll teach him, he'll become a really good player."
One of the hardest parts of being a rookie is acclimating to the new system as well as its language and terminology. But for Lamp and Feeney, the pair has been helping each other on and off the field and hope to continue that support throughout the rest of their careers.
"I think that's one of the best ways to study; talking out loud (to each other) in your own kind of language," Feeney explained. "It makes more sense when you say it yourself. It just clicks differently."
