By Howard Tsumura (VarsityLetters.ca)
VANCOUVER — Theo Benedet showed up at Chicago Bears training camp and made such an impression that it was senseless to whisper.
And on Tuesday afternoon, after the North Vancouver native and UBC Thunderbirds’ alumnus was announced as part of the NFL team’s final 53-man roster, what wound up speaking loudest of all was the strength of character summoned by the 6-foot-7, 304 pound left tackle while he battled all of the setbacks which plagued both his pre-draft and training camp experiences a season ago.
To put it succinctly, Benedet’s rise to prominence with one of the league’s most enduring franchises has, over these past few weeks of camp, defined carpe diem.
And coming on the same day that his former UBC offensive line teammate Giovanni Manu was making his second straight final cut with the Detroit Lions?
It was a red letter day, one for B.C. football fans raised on both the UBC and provincial high school varietals of the game to hoist their glasses in toast.
Those same two teams are scheduled to meet in Detroit in Week 2 of the new NFL season, and there, the potential exists for Benedet and Manu to take meaningful snaps in the same game for the first time since they manned the bookend tackle spots on a ‘Birds which lost in the 2023 Vanier Cup national final.
(A look at Theo Benedet and Giovanni Manu prior to the 2024 NFL Draft)
Along the way, Benedet won back-to-back J.P. Metras awards, emblematic of nation’s top down lineman.
Yet after signing with the Bears as an undrafted free agent, he suffered a hamstring strain in last season’s training camp which wound up costing him the entire season.
When it came time to talk with those who had a chance to interact with the 2019 graduate of North Vancouver’s Handsworth Secondary at various points along his journey to the very top of the game’s delivery system, it became clear that Benedet’s blend of perseverance and self-belief were indeed true and enduring traits, ones which had already taken root during his earliest days in the game.
“He was just one of those kids, you just looked in his eyes and you saw his intensity,” said Jay Prepchuk, who first met a Grade 8 Benedet back in the fall of 2014 during his long stay at Handsworth as both a counselor and senior varsity head football coach.
“You could see the desire, the passion he had even though he might not have known back then about his direction or goals,” continued Prepchuk, 62. “You could see he had a passion to succeed at whatever he was doing.”
Prepchuk, himself a Handsworth grad (1979) who would later coach the Royals to the 2007 B.C. AA Subway Bowl title, also served as UBC’s head football coach from 1999-2001, and later re-connected with Benedet during his 2019 freshman season with the ‘Birds after he returned to the school to serve as its quarterbacks coach.
While Benedet was, by that stage, coming into his own at the next level, Prepchuk saw it as a logical progression of what he had seen of Benedet when he played for the junior varsity at Handsworth.
“Even though I was the varsity coach, I still had a lot to do with the JV’s, and I could see that even during their practices, when the kids were doing their walk-throughs… there were no walk-throughs for Theo,” Prepchuk laughed. “He was the one smacking everyone… he always played with intensity. I think it might have pissed some of the other kids off.”
The Benedet-Manu era at UBC remains amongst the most competitive stretches in program history, and as he entered the program in the same season as Benedet, Thunderbirds’ recruiting coordinator Shomari Williams, himself the No. 1 overall draft pick in the 2010 CFL draft, grew to see the same traits that helped Benedet pull through his tough road to the Bears.
“I have always known that Theo would figure it out,” Williams said, “… that once he got his chance at the NFL, he would figure it out and have a long career. I have spoken to people in the Chicago Bears organization and they were super high on him, even to fight for a starting job. He’s so passionate about the sport and he plays with such a great temperament.”
Benedet also looked pretty comfortable and self-assured fielding questions from the Chicago media after a practice following the team’s preseason win over the Buffalo Bills.
When asked to respond to the fact that he may have at first been overlooked in the battle at left tackle by the new coaching staff in Chicago this season, his answer was delivered with a veteran’s poise.
“Yeah, I think so, but it’s not their fault, it’s nobody’s fault, there was just no film on me,” Benedet said. “…I got hurt last year, so it was kind of audition on the run there at the start of OTAs, but I am glad that they have noticed.”
Johnson said Tuesday after the final 53-man roster was released, that any talk of starting positions would come in the week ahead.
“I think we’re going to have a starter Week 1, and we’ll go from there,” he began of the much discussed left tackle spot. “I said it a few weeks ago… we feel good about the guys that we have in that room. Someone’s going to take the bull by the horns and is going to completely take over, but we’re not afraid to make a change if the performance isn’t where it needs to be. So we’ll make that decision going into next week. I am sure you guys will have a good idea who our starters are going to be going into (the season opener in) Minnesota (Sept. 8), but mentally I am not there yet. This week is still about us.”
And within that group, Benedet, the undrafted and unheralded guy from North Vancouver, has made his mark.
Earlier this preseason, a reporter asked Benedet a simple question: If at the end of last year, someone had told him that by the end of training camp that he’d be right there to be the team’s starting left tackle, would he have believed it?
Theo Benedet didn’t hesitate for a second.
“It would have made sense to me,” he said with equal parts confidence and sass.
He knows he still has to wait for the answer, but whatever it might be, you just knew at that moment he was ready.
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