The Grim Reaper will be lurking about on Sunday and for the handful of Cougars looking to make an NFL roster, they would be wise to avoid him. He is merciless on cutdown days when teams are required to reduce their roster to 53 players.
“Each team has a Grim Reaper, and you know who they are — a player personnel guy,” former Cougar Harvey Langi told the “Y’s Guys” livestream show this week. “He gets all the information. He’s the guy that has to come in and lay down the law.”
Avoiding such a harrowing visit sometimes requires the same athleticism as it takes to make the team, especially when the Grim Reaper is walking toward you.
“Oh! My goodness! You see him (in the hall), I’d throw my playbook in my backpack and say, ‘I’m going home real quick, guys!’” Langi said. “I’ll see you later!”
Dodge it as best as you can, but every player knows that if you are on the Grim Reaper’s list, he’ll find you.
“Sometimes, during that process, you get back into practice, and you (notice) your buddy’s lockers are cleaned out and they are on their way back to their locker (to find out),” Langi said. “You are like, ‘Dude, this is going to be pretty sad here.’ Boom! Bam! Gone!”
Langi made the Patriots 53-man roster as an undrafted free agent in 2017 and he survived long enough to play 44 games over five years with the Patriots, Jets, Broncos and Raiders before injuries took him out. He never received “the call” on cutdown day, but he always feared it was coming — everybody does.
“We know how many spots are open. We know how many guys are still here, now let’s see if I’ve done enough to show a value to where they don’t call my phone,” said Langi. “I’d turn my phone up loud, and if that sucker rings, it might ring because it’s my brother asking, ‘Did you hear yet?’ Or my best friend, ‘What happened?’ I’m like, ‘Gosh, guys! Stop calling me! Wait until tomorrow!’ As long as it wasn’t the Grim Reaper, or one of the coaches — usually it’s the Grim Reaper that will call and say, ‘Bring your playbook and meet at the facility.’”
High hopes
Chase Roberts, Mory Bamba, Isaiah Jatta, Carson Ryan, Kedon Slovis, Zach Wilson, Tyler Batty and a handful of other former Cougars hope to avoid getting that call on Sunday and each has one more preseason game to strengthen their case.
“You are not (completely) safe until the first game,” said Langi. “But you are pretty safe if you get past the 48- to 72-hour period that they have to call you up and let you go.”
To many, the call isn’t just a business decision, it runs much deeper than that.
“For me, I got into football at 7 years old, and that (cutdown) day determines if all that hard work, all that dreaming and all the sacrifice that coaches, parents, loved ones have made for me was worth it,” Langi said. “If I don’t get this call, I’ve proved I can do this and I can keep doing this. If you do get that call, it can either crush you or allow you to have that chip on your shoulder like, ‘I hope somebody gives me a chance. They won’t regret it.’”
Second chances
The Grim Reaper’s call on cutdown day is devastating, but not eternal. There is always a way back for an athlete, like Taysom Hill, who just needed a better fit. The Packers cut Hill as an undrafted free agent on Sept. 2, 2017, and he was quickly snatched up by the Saints where he became a star for nine seasons.
“He went to the Saints with a guy (Sean Payton) who knew how to use him and didn’t care that a quarterback is playing on kickoffs and kickoff returns,” Langi said. “He just saw a very athletic guy and wanted to get him on the field and he did that.”
Zach Wilson entered the league as the No. 2 overall pick with the Jets in 2021 — a franchise that turned out to be a wrong fit.
“I was there right before he got there,” Langi said. “Zach goes into that right after Sam (Darnold) leaves and he falls into the timing of bad culture from the top down. Was Zach a bad football player? No.”
Wilson, who also played a season in Miami as a backup, is hoping the situation in New Orleans, with head coach Kellen Moore, will give his career a new life.
49ers star Fred Warner isn’t going to get cut this weekend, but there was a time the former Cougar linebacker wasn’t so sure. So, he called Langi who was also doing everything he could to keep his job too.
“He said, ‘Hey, I see you on special teams and rotating on defense. I’m trying to learn how to punt block because I’m on special teams. How do you punt block?’” Langi recalled. “I remember on the call with Fred just teaching him how I was punt blocking.”
As Warner was working special teams, a spot unexpectedly opened at linebacker.
“Fred gets in there in a great defense that allows him to do what he does best,” Langi said. “It allows him to play ‘cover-free,’ allows him to blitz and use his length and it just sprouted into a Pro Bowl-Hall of Fame-type career.”
Turning heads
BYU sophomore quarterback Bear Bachmeier turned a lot of heads by going 12-2 during his debut season in Provo. At 6-foot-2 and 230 pounds, Bachmeier is full of NFL potential, but the quest in front of him is to build on his hot start and show he can do it again.
“I like that we have an opportunity to see Bear go in Year 2. I’m a big defensive guy and seeing a freshman come out and do some miraculous things and just put the team on his back, it was pretty cool to watch,” said Langi, who works as a BYUtv football analyst. “Now with some time under his belt, with some practices, building chemistry and some synergy with the offense and his offensive coordinator and the coaches and all the surroundings at BYU and just being loved up, let’s see what he can do in Year 2.”
Bachmeier’s second season starts one week from Saturday when the No. 14 Cougars host Utah Tech at LaVell Edwards Stadium (6 p.m. MDT, ESPN+)
Langi’s 5 toughest BYU opponents in 2026
5. Kansas/Cincinnati: “These are late season traps with playoff implications. Those two teams, I believe, will have nothing to lose and BYU will have everything to lose at that point.”
4. Utah: “It’s at No. 4 due to the emotional, physicality of the game and its very unpredictable. In this game, you take all stats out and it comes down to who came to play that day. I do think we can dominate them in the trenches.”
3. Notre Dame: “This is a national measuring stick for us. If we win the Big 12, that proves to us that we are progressing and that we belong (as a P4). If we beat Notre Dame, now it’s like, ‘Get us in the college football playoff conversation.’ If Notre Dame beats us, it’s gonna be like, ‘Hey little bro, you stay down there until you are ready.’”
2. TCU: “They (Horned Frogs) will be 4-0 and playing BYU off a bye week. BYU struggles to start fast coming off a bye week. It will show ‘how do we travel (to face) a team that is undefeated.’ This is going to show it doesn’t matter whose house we go to, this is what we are going to do to you.”
1. Arizona: “This is an identity game. BYU is going to have to know their identity by Week 2. When it comes to who is BYU this year? Who are the weapons that Bear is going to throw to down field? Who is Cade (Uluave) as a BYU linebacker? Who is Nusi (Taumoepeau)? Is he that guy? We are in conference play (in) Week 2. We are not going to have weeks to figure out who we are.”
Dave McCann is a sportswriter and columnist for the Deseret News and is a play-by-play announcer and show host for BYUtv/ESPN+. He co-hosts “Y’s Guys” at ysguys.com and is the author of the children’s book “C is for Cougar,” available at deseretbook.com.