Dillon Thieneman followed his instincts to Oregon — and ultimately on a path to the Bears
CHICAGO — As Dillon Thieneman’s high school coach tells it, Thieneman’s father, Ken, had a saying while Dillon was growing up. “His dad says all the time: You’ve got to skate to where the puck’s going, not to where the puck is,” said Jake Gilbert, Thieneman’s coach at Westfield (Ind. ) High School and now head coach at Division III Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Ind.
Ken didn’t invent that saying, as any hockey fan or student of Wayne Gretzky would tell you. Dillon himself admitted he’s a little foggy about that memory. But the underlying message stuck with him.
“My idea of it is it’s probably more of a feel for the game,” Thieneman said Friday while holding court during his first news conference at Halas Hall. “How’s the pocket moving? What are they trying to attack?
And just be aggressive to the point of attack. ” Thieneman applied that philosophy — skate to where the puck is going — while making the most critical decision of his career: relinquishing a family legacy at Purdue, rolling the dice on one visit to Oregon and embracing some uncomfortable truths about himself. But that foresight — seeing where he needed to be, not where he was — set him on a path to being drafted in the first round by the Chicago Bears.
Oregon defensive coordinator and safeties coach Chris Hampton remembers when Thieneman was in the market for a new college program. Bringing up all the tackles he missed during his sophomore season at Purdue would seem to be the worst recruiting pitch — but not for someone with Thieneman’s makeup. “He had a bunch of visits lined up.
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