Tarik Cohen sat down exclusively with Bear Goggles On and talked about his life in football.
Tarik Cohen is elusive on the field, but Bear Goggles On was able to track him down and have a conversation with the Chicago Bears’ running back.
Cohen was open and conversational about plenty of interesting topics. Not just about this Bears’ team, but about his early years of football, working to get recruited and his confidence in young Mitch Trubisky.
Check out Tarik’s conversation below, and if you want to check out the podcast featuring Cohen, check it out here.
Growing up in North Carolina, when did football become a big deal in your life?
It was always a big deal. My mom put me and my twin brother in it at a young age. And us being competitive against each other, we wanted to be great at whatever we did. We always competed against each other and it became a big part of our lives.
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Once you got to high school, what was the recruiting process like for you, and at what point in your life did you start thinking to yourself, you know what, I have a shot at the NFL?
We were sending letters everywhere, my head coach was, Chris Miller. My fourth period class, I would email other schools as well. But we weren’t getting a lot of attention but we had a couple of schools that liked me. Old Dominion was looking at me, Elon, and Pembroke, but A&T was the only school that offered me. By the time I got to my senior year of high school I was thinking, yeah, I’m gonna make this big push. I’m going to work as hard as I can to get to the NFL because I feel I’m talented enough to get there.
What was your response to people who told you that you were too small to play football?
People would never say it to me, I would just read about it and stuff. I would just take it and channel it into how I played that following game. Just go out and ball. I feel like when you ball there’s not too much you can say.
Right about the time you were drafted, an instagram post of you doing a backflip while catching two balls simultaneously (check it out here) surfaced and it’s one of the most athletic accomplishments I’ve ever seen. When did you realize you could do that and how many takes did it take?
It took like 12 takes. I just realized I could do it when I did the other backflip catches. I did two hands with one ball, then I did one hand with one ball, then I said I have to step it up one more time and that was the only thing I could think of, so we tried it after summer workouts and we landed it.
After Mitch Trubisky’s performance against Tampa, how much more confidence do you have in him and can he keep playing at that level moving forward?
I’ve always had confidence in Mitch. From day one, he’s always had the same attitude, you know, the get better attitude. He’s not going to let something he messes up on affect him twice. He’s going to always get better and learn from his mistakes. Leading up into any game, I have the same amount of confidence with him. I just know he’s going to perform moving forward like he did against Tampa Bay.
Last question and possibly the most important one- North Carolina BBQ or Chicago-Style Pizza- what’s better?
I gotta go with the barbecue. You can’t beat a cookout.