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| FILE - In this Feb. 25, 2013 file photo, Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o runs a drill during the NFL football scouting combine in Indianapolis. Te'o made it to the NFL a day later than he expected, motivated to play well because he was snubbed in the first round of the draft. |
SAN DIEGO
(AP) -- Manti Te'o made it to the NFL a day later than he expected,
motivated to play well because he was snubbed in the first round of the
draft.
Unconcerned about a hoax involving a
fake girlfriend and a flop in the national championship game that have
dogged Te'o for four months, San Diego Chargers rookie general manager
Tom Telesco moved up seven spots in the second round to draft the Notre
Dame linebacker on Friday night.
"I did expect
to go in the first round. But things happened and all it did was give
me more motivation to get better," Te'o said in a conference call with
reporters.
Te'o had spent Thursday with family
members in Hawaii, watching the first round of the draft and waiting
for a phone call that never came.
That call came Friday.
"I
don't know if I have something to prove, but it definitely puts a huge
fire under my butt to just be better," Te'o said. "Again, that's the
best thing that ever could happen to me. I'm already naturally a
motivated person who just wants to be the best. All yesterday did was
just give me more motivation and more fire to just go out there and play
football and do well at it."
Te'o visited the
Chargers before the draft, giving Telesco and rookie head coach Mike
McCoy the chance to ask him about the issues.
"He handled it great," Telesco said.
Were the Chargers bothered by the scrutiny Te'o has been under?
"Obviously
not. We took him," Telesco said. "We did our due diligence. All that
stuff is not a concern to us.
So we're just really, really excited to
get him here. He took that Notre Dame program and kind of raised the
talent level of the whole program. He was the undisputed leader there.
We saw that.
"As a player, as a playmaker, he's instinctive. We can't wait to get him on the field."
Telesco
said the Chargers had Te'o rated as a first-rounder. They needed an
inside linebacker because Takeo Spikes was released and Demorrio
Williams is a free agent.
Telesco got Arizona's second-round pick, No. 38, in exchange for San Diego's second- (No. 45) and fourth-round (No. 110) picks.
"We
knew somebody may come up to get him. It was strictly just a judgment, a
gut call," Telesco said. "Can we wait any longer? We made the move up
to get him. Could we have waited? You just never know. We thought the
value was there as far as giving up that pick to go get him."
Before being hired by the Chargers, Telesco was in the Indianapolis Colts' front office and had seen Te'o play several times.
"He's
one of the finest kids I've met," Telesco said. "He loves football, is
passionate about it. He's a leader.
He was a leader at Notre Dame, not
only on the football team, but on that campus."
Two
officials, each with a different team, said their clubs passed on Te'o
in the first round partly because of his off-field issues. The men,
speaking on condition of anonymity because team draft strategy is
confidential, said the decision was not just because of a disappointing
combine performance or the linebacker's poor performance in the national
title game.
The Heisman Trophy runner-up
became the butt of national jokes after it was revealed he was duped
into an Internet romance he had with a girlfriend he never met.
The
too-good-to-be-true story began with Te'o's incredible performances
after learning his grandmother and what he believed was his girlfriend
had died within hours of one another in September. Te'o said it inspired
him to play his best football all season, and it was so compelling that
it helped turn Te'o into a Heisman Trophy contender as he was leading
the Fighting Irish to an undefeated regular season and into the national
championship game.
On Dec. 26, Te'o notified
Notre Dame officials that he had received a call from his supposedly
dead girlfriend's phone three weeks earlier.
The
school investigated and on Jan. 16 - after Deadspin.com broke the story
of the fake girlfriend - athletic director Jack Swarbrick announced at a
news conference that Te'o had been duped. Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, 22, later
said he created the online persona of Lennay Kekua, a nonexistent woman
whom Te'o said he fell in love with despite never meeting her in
person.
Te'o struggled in Notre Dame's blowout
loss in the national championship game to Alabama and its offense full
of future NFL draft picks. One of those players, right tackle D.J.
Fluker, was drafted by the Chargers with the 11th overall pick Thursday
night.
Te'o said everything he's gone through
has increased his passion for the game because "that's my sanctuary,
that's my fortress where I'm most comfortable. All it has done is made
me look forward to when I'm back on that field again."
Te'o will get plenty of attention before he even plays a game with the Bolts.
"This
is going to be a football team. He's going to have to deal with it,"
McCoy said. "The situation came up, he'll deal with that. People are
going to have questions, OK? That's happened. He's going to learn from
it, very similar to a lot of other people in life. You make a mistake
from time to time, whatever that is, and you move on. You learn from it.
It might come up at some point in time, but we'll deal with it however
we need to. But he's one of ours now and he's going to help us win a
championship here."
Te'o said going to the
Chargers is "a perfect scenario. My parents can come and watch, I can go
home, it's San Diego. We're all excited. I can't be any happier. Just
looking forward to getting up there and getting this whole thing
started.
"You talk about the Chargers,
especially for a Samoan kid like me and you think of Junior Seau and
what he did there and the legacy he left behind not only in San Diego
but in the NFL," he said, mentioning the Chargers' late star linebacker.
A
four-year starter and team captain, Te'o had 113 tackles, seven
interceptions - the most ever in a season by a Fighting Irish linebacker
- and 1 1/2 sacks in 2012.
Te'o said he's going to be the same player in the pros as he was in college.
"I
love the game, first and foremost. I'm a student of the game. I love to
study film. I work hard. That's exactly what I'm going to be. I'm not
going to change anything."
In the third round, the Chargers took Keenan Allen, California's all-time leading wide receiver, with the 76th pick overall.
The
pick was unexpected, but certainly upgrades the position. He had 61
catches for 737 yards and six touchdowns for the Golden Bears last year,
when he missed the final three games with a knee injury. He finished
with 205 catches in three seasons. His 2,570 career yards were third in
school history.
