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KEARNS — Andy Reid really, really likes football players from the state of Utah.
Even those who went to Eugene, Oregon, for their college career.
Former Kearns High all-state linebacker Jeffrey Bassa was selected by the Kansas City Chiefs with the 20th pick of the fifth round (No. 156 overall) Saturday afternoon, becoming the eighth former Oregon player drafted this year and one of two former Utah high school players drafted in the fifth round.
The Chiefs, led by former BYU offensive lineman and graduate assistant Reid, traded a seventh-round pick (No. 226) to swap the 156th and 164th picks in the fifth round with the Pittsburgh Steelers.
After an all-state career with the Cougars, Bassa spent four seasons at Oregon where he totaled 237 tackles including 126 solo stops, 14.5 tackles for loss, 5.5 sacks and three interceptions.
That includes 55 tackles and 2.5 sacks en route to All-Big Ten honorable mention honors as a senior, when he started 13 of 14 games at inside linebacker while helping the Ducks to a 13-1 campaign, a Big Ten title and the No. 1 ranking in the inaugural 12-team College Football Playoff.
A former four-star recruit by 247Sports, who played wide receiver and defensive back at Kearns, Bassa earned all-state honors while helping the Cougars to a 10-2 record and a berth in the 6A state quarterfinals as a junior in 2019.
The 6-foot-1 linebacker ran a 4.63-second 40 at the NFL Combine, and excelled in the vertical jump with a leap of 38.5 inches.
Bassa is just the second former Kearns star to make the NFL, as noted by the Deseret News. He's the first since linebacker Gary Padjen was an 11th-round pick of the Dallas Cowboys in 1980.
He wasn't the only former Utah high school standout drafted in the fifth round Saturday.
Former Highland High tight end Jackson Hawes went to the Buffalo Bills with the No. 37 pick of the fifth round (No. 173 overall).
Hawes, 24, played in 12 games with 10 starts at Georgia Tech last year, where he caught 16 passes for 195 yards. But the former Yale tight end made his mark as a blocker, leading the ACC and ranking eighth nationally among tight ends in both run blocking (74.7 grade) and pass blocking (74.9) by Pro Football Focus.
Hawes played previously at Yale from 2019-23, where the 6-foot-5, 260-pound all-state second-team selection caught 35 passes for 371 yards and six touchdowns before the All-Ivy League second-team honoree graduated with a degree in economics and transferred (the Ivy League does not permit graduate students to participate in athletics) to study business administration in Atlanta.
Hawes joins another former Utah tight end in Buffalo in Dalton Kincaid, the former first-round pick from Las Vegas by way of San Diego and the University of Utah who caught 117 passes for 1,121 yards and four touchdowns in his first two seasons in the NFL.
The tight end room also includes Dawson Knox and Zach Davidson, who signed a reserve/future deal prior to the draft.
