1/6/2020 football Edit

Bryson Bonds brings brains to Bloomington after beating clock with Hoosiers

Taylor Lehman • TheHoosier

Staff

Indiana signee and Texas three-star safety Bryson Bonds is a two-time All-State safety who has competed at the highest levels of 7-on-7 competition and excelled in Class 5A Texas High School football but was fearful of not having a Power Five home before the signing periods.

But the Hoosiers picked him up just 51 days before the Early Signing Period.

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The moment Tommy Bonds stepped into his hotel room with his wife, Kim, in Bloomington, he knew his son was going to commit to Indiana.

Indiana wasn’t the place three-star Texas safety Bryson Bonds had anticipated playing when he realized in middle school that he could potentially make football a collegiate journey, but before getting to Bloomington for his official visit with his parents and after his options had become limited by early-December, he was eager to see what awaited him at the Crossroads of America.

Tommy and Kim were in a similar state of mind as Bryson when the family arrived for Indiana’s largest recruiting weekend of the fall, and they spoke with coaches and staff along with their son before breaking off for the evening.

“I looked at Kim and said, ‘That’s a wrap,’” Tommy said. “I think Bryson was feeling it after he met with some of the boys. After the photoshoot, he said, ‘Dad, I’m ready.’”

It wasn’t simply a matter of getting Bryson on campus, though. Indiana safeties coach Kasey Teegardin had sparked a relationship with the Crowley native in October and extended him an offer Oct. 28, just 51 days before the Early Signing Period.

Teegardin left an impression on Bryson and Tommy, who said Teegardin once visited the school and talked with Tommy, the linebackers coach at Crowley High School, for at least 45 minutes before asking to see Bryson.

Teegardin and Bryson talked on the phone three or four times per week and communicated through text every day. The three-star safety quickly became Indiana’s top target to fill the safety position in 2020. If the Hoosiers could land Bryson, they considered it a steal.

“Within that first month that me and Coach Teegardin started talking, I knew more about Indiana than I knew about any of the other schools I had had an offer from,” Bryson said. “It was more about building the relationship than it was like, ‘We need you here. Come play football for us.’”

His three priorities, none of which included the game of football – grow spiritually, excel academically and be compatible with coaches and players – were met before he even stepped foot in Indiana, he said.

But after being presented data by Indiana’s strength and developmental staff, seeing the campus and facilities, both athletically and academically at the Kelley School of Business, and spending time with his co-hosts, Devon Matthews and Noah Pierre, he learned that what the coaching staff was selling him, and what it’s been selling to the public, was true. The culture defined by familial care was real.

“Just like they’re saying, Love Each Other – everybody’s just caring of each other, all for one, for one common goal. It’s never about one person,” Bryson said. “Those guys are great. I can’t wait to be teammates with them and play football with them.”

That was a relief for the Bonds family, who had been grasping for straws, trying to get Power Five programs to notice Bryson.

How Cheese became a three-star safety

At Crowley, just outside the Dallas-Fort Worth area of Texas, Bryson played with the same teammates from second grade until the end of his senior season. In third grade, he noticed that each of them had his own nickname.

He approached his coach and expressed his envy.

“He was like, ‘Alright Bryson, what do you like?’” Bryson said. “I just said the first thing that came to my mind – cheese. I don’t know why, but it stuck. I’ve been Cheese Bonds ever since.”

His nickname was welcomed by his teammates, and it carried so deeply into his playing career that his father’s nickname has become Coach Cheese to some of his players, rather than Coach Bonds.

“Cheese” is indicative of the group that Bryson is a part of at Crowley. Tommy, in tandem with the rest of the coaching staff, wanted to keep all 52 of them together at the junior varsity level, even during their sophomore season, when many high-level recruits are breaking out at the varsity level.

But when a safety was lost at the varsity level, the head varsity coach called upon Tommy for permission to promote Bryson to the vacancy, even though Bryson had never played a snap at safety in his life.

“I said, ‘No, he’s not doing it,’” Tommy said. “Then he was like, ‘Tommy, he’s the only one that understands what we’re doing.’”

That’s the way Bryson has made his way onto the field throughout most of his career, using his brain. Before he developed a physique of a Division I prospect, he studied football. Tommy, who played running back at UTEP from 1983-86, taught Bryson how to study film when his son was in fourth grade.

Bryson has also never received a grade lower than an A, he’s an officer for National Honor Society at Crowley, and he competes in Number Sense challenges for University Interscholastic League (UIL), where contestants must do 80 math problems in 10 minutes without writing out their work. Bryson placed top-three in his district for several consecutive years.

“There’s no such thing as too much education,” Bryson said his parents would tell him when he was younger. “As I got older, I took it upon myself and made it a priority.”

He said he was “a chunkier kid” in the younger stages of football, so he began as a linebacker and a tight end. Eventually in middle school, he moved to outside linebacker, where he played through his freshman year. Then he moved to safety.

Being thrown into the fire at safety didn’t faze Bryson much. He had already been studying the tendencies of his teammates when he was at linebacker, and he immediately became one of the playmakers for Crowley, which plays at the Class 5A level of Texas High School football.

Before the end of that season, Bryson was already a key contributor in preparation for games Tommy said he was even skeptical of how his son would adjust so quickly, but one day at practice, Bryson corrected his coach on an oversight during team drills.

“‘Wait, wait, wait, we can’t do that!’” Tommy said Bryson exclaimed to interrupt the practice. “We looked at him like, ‘Dude, what the hell are you talking about?’ He said, ‘Coach, you said we were going to do this and this in the meeting, and now we’re not doing it. What are we going to do?’ That’s when he got a little extra respect from me and his coach. His coach said, ‘To hell with you, Cheese, but you alright.’”

Tommy never wanted Bryson to be “a coach’s son.” He didn’t want the perception of his son to align with complacency or an inherent rite within the sport. So the two worked out most nights in their garage, and after practice, Tommy spent time to individually evaluate his son.

Eventually, Bryson was stacking All-State seasons at one of the highest levels of high school football in the country.

He recorded 103 tackles, five interceptions, 15 pass breakups, six fumble recoveries and four touchdowns as a junior and 115 tackles, eight tackles for loss, 11 pass breakups, one sack, one forced fumble, two fumble recoveries and a blocked field goal as a senior.

But his offers list never exploded the way it typically does for higher-rated Texas recruits. Eventually, his list was filled with Ivy League programs, service academies, Texas Tech, Minnesota and Kansas.

“My academics really carried my recruitment, and with that split, it caught the attention of a lot of academic schools,” Bryson said. “Everything happened for a reason, and that’s why I’m with Indiana today.”

Pushed against the clock

There were backup plans if a school like Indiana didn’t come along. The Bondses were forced to put together plans for Bryson to go to an Ivy League school as the clock continued to tick toward the signing periods.

But Bryson wanted to play at the Power Five level, and he and his father believed he had that ability.

“We had 25 offers,” Tommy said, “but I told Kim, ‘Who we’re looking for has not even contacted us yet.’”

Bryson had posted an All-State junior season at the second-highest level of football in Texas at that point and played on one of the best national 7-on-7 teams in the country. His team, Texas Swoosh, featured Clemson defensive back signee RJ Mickens, Ohio State wide receiver signee Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Oklahoma wide receiver signee DJ Graham and several others, and they played talent of similar stature in Florida, Georgia and California, as well as locally in Texas.

Bryson also works separately with Clay Mack, a trainer in Texas who has trained New York Jets safety Jamal Adams and current Ohio State cornerback Jeff Okudah, as well as 12 NFL Draft selections.

“He was one of the only ones (on the 7-on-7 team) that didn’t have a ‘big-time’ offer,” Tommy said. “I told him to just be patient and things will start working out. With the big schools, you can’t just call somebody and get a call back.”

Tommy has friends on staff at Baylor, Oklahoma and TCU, but none of the three schools offered scholarships and never provided explanations as to why Bryson wasn’t receiving offers. So Tommy and Bryson studied every top-100 safety in an effort to make improvements and show similar skills on tape.

“We’d look at Ray (Mickens), and he would say, ‘Dad, I do that better than him,’” Tommy said. “I would say, ‘I understand that, but you’ve got to capitalize on those situations when they come about. When we go to these camps, you’ve got to do something extraordinary for you to stand out.’”

For Bryson, while he’s capable physically, his intelligence is his standout characteristic, but getting intelligence to stand out in a 7-on-7 setting as a safety can be difficult, particularly when his safety teammate was an inch taller, 10 pounds heavier, the son of a 10-year NFL veteran and rated as the top 2020 prospect at his position.

Even Indiana defensive coordinator Kane Wommack was baffled by the lack of interest in Bryson, asking Tommy why he wasn’t offered by more Power Five programs.

“Because, well, he’s a three-star,” Tommy said in response. “In Texas, everybody is a four-star, five-star.”

Eventually, the Texas Tech and Minnesota offers weren’t there for Bryson anymore, and the only Power Five school showing true interest in Bryson was Kansas.

He visited Kansas unofficially around the time Indiana extended its offer and had an official visit set up with the Jayhawks staff for the weekend of Dec. 7, until Indiana hoped to get him in Bloomington on that day. The Bondses switched weekends, scheduling the Indiana visit first.

Now, the safeties coach that wanted Bryson at Kansas, Clint Bowen, is the defensive coordinator at North Texas, and Bryson and his family said they feel positive about the decision to choose Indiana, even when pushed against the clock.

“Both of us (Kim and Tommy) are so grateful that he found a place where, without a doubt, no regrets, this is where he wants to be,” Kim said. “He wants to be a Hoosier.”