Zach Strief will be the first to tell you that the last seventeen years of his life weren’t supposed to go the way they did. Ask him about the obvious highlights, starting with his five seasons at Northwestern and the twelve he spent with the New Orleans Saints, and watch him shake his head and grin. None of it was planned, he’ll say, and none of it was taken for granted. He worked hard and went where the road took him, a road that, fittingly, will bring him back to Evanston this fall where he’ll be formally introduced as one of the newest members of the Northwestern Athletics Hall of Fame.
Hall of famer. It’s a title that Strief is still getting used to. For a man who was one of the best at what he did for a living in the NFL before retiring this past spring, he has a remarkably modest view of himself, and legend status at his alma mater hasn’t done much to change that.
“I thought I was just a normal player,” he said, thinking back on his years as a Wildcat. “It’s hard as an offensive lineman; there are no stats. You either think you’re great or you don’t.”
In spite of what he might have thought, Strief was, in fact, very good. He was a pillar on the line during his college career, providing pass protection and run blocking for juggernaut offenses like the one in 2005, his senior season, that ranked fourth in the nation, averaging just north of 500 yards a game. That same year, Strief became the first Wildcat offensive lineman in more than two decades to be named a Football Writers Association of America first-team All-American.
But it’s only by a stroke of luck that all that happened while he was wearing purple and white. As a standout at Milford High School in Milford, Ohio, Strief drew plenty of interest from Big 10 teams, but Northwestern wasn’t among them. At least not at first.
The summer following his junior year of high school, he arranged to visit a handful of collegiate football camps around the Midwest to showcase his stuff. He and his dad, Doug, embarked on a mini tour, spending a day or two at each campus, with Notre Dame scheduled as their final stop. They were in South Bend when Strief noticed Northwestern had a camp that extended into the following day.
“We figured why not,” he said. “We could go up to Chicago, have a nice meal somewhere in the city, and it would be a fun end to the trip. When we got there, I went into the football office and they looked at me and said, ‘What’s your name?’ Essentially, I was told I wasn’t on any of their recruiting boards. But what ended up happening was I fell in love with the university and the coaching staff. At the end of that day, Northwestern was very much the leader for me.”
At one point during the camp, Aaron Kromer, the Wildcats’ offensive line coach, pulled Strief aside and told him the feeling was mutual. When the scholarship offer came, he jumped at the chance to play ball while earning a world-class degree, something he figured he could put to work for himself after graduation. At that point, playing football professionally wasn’t something Strief even considered.
Today, ironically, he says his making it to the NFL and lasting as long as he did was a direct result of that decision. His seasons at Northwestern transformed him not only as a football player, but as a man. Taking a reverent tone, Strief attributes that to the lessons he learned from head coach Randy Walker, describing how the culture of the program set him on a path for greater things.
“I’ve talked a lot about the special relationship I felt like I had with Coach Walker. Everything was tough with Randy. I went through four years wondering when the hard stuff would stop. Then, during my senior year, we were walking out to training camp practice one day, and Coach Walker runs up behind me and says, ‘Hey Zach, somewhere toward the end of practice I’m going to yell at somebody. I’m not sure who it will be yet, but I’m going to yell at somebody and I’m going to make you guys run a lot, and I’m going to need you to pick the guys up.’ I looked at him funny, then it dawned on me that it was all a ploy. It was all about molding us into people who had mental toughness, guys who could stand together with each other. It was eye opening for me and it changed my life.”
By his junior season, Strief had emerged as a force on the field and pro scouts started taking notice. At that same time, friend and former teammate Austin King, who was playing for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, surprised him by telling him he thought he had what it took to make it to the NFL.
“I grew up watching NFL football more so than college football,” Strief said. “We had Bengals season tickets when I was a kid, and those figures were larger than life. To me, I was not anywhere near that level. Then, all of a sudden, people were saying, ‘Oh yeah, you could do that, too.’ That did not click real well with me. There was part of me that thought I wasn’t really that good, but maybe someone would bring me in for a year and I would get to put on a uniform at some point. That was the extent of it. What I didn’t know was just how much of a jump it was from college to the pros and how big of a leap it would be to accomplish that.”
It didn’t take long after being drafted by the Saints in the seventh round in 2006 for that reality to sink in. Strief got his first taste of the rigors of NFL life at training camp that summer in Jackson, Mississippi, under a scorching sun and a blanket of humidity. It was a brutal one, led by first-year head coach Sean Payton, and Strief came awfully close to packing his bags and heading back to Ohio. As much as anything, it was his loyalty to his former coach that made him stick with it. Payton had been an assistant under Walker at Miami (OH) University, and it was a phone call with his old boss that had convinced him to draft Strief in the first place.
“Randy was one of those guys that [it] just was hard to get strong opinions [from him] about somebody,” Payton recalled in March at Zach’s retirement press conference. “He was a tough judge, but if he ever did have a strong opinion, you’d listen. I called Randy to get some feedback on Brett Basanez [who played with Zach at Northwestern]. We spoke a while about that and then he asked me about Zach, his right tackle who was captain, and he just went on and on about him…Honestly, those words from Randy had as much to do with us looking closely [at Zach as anything], because I can only think of two or three times that Randy spoke that way about any one player.”
During that conversation, Walker told Payton that Strief could last ten years in the league, and Strief was determined to prove him right, drawing strength from his desire to live up to Walker’s expectations and the glowing endorsement he had given him.
“There were days when I felt physically like I could not do anymore, and yet mentally, from five years at Northwestern, I knew it was for a better end,” Strief said of the toll his first NFL camp took. “I think Coach Payton recognized that. It wasn’t anything I was doing to impress him; it was something that I just had innate in me from Coach Walker.”
Instead of washing out, Strief persevered and carved a niche for himself in New Orleans. Under the tutelage of veteran Jon Stinchcomb, he made improvements each year, helping the team to a Super Bowl title in 2009 – the first ever for the Saints franchise. In 2011, Strief got his big break, moving into the starting role at right tackle. He made an immediate impact, protecting quarterback Drew Brees as he led the NFL in passing yardage, completions and touchdowns that season. Just as importantly, Strief became a respected voice in the locker room, so much so that the next year he was named an offensive captain.
When it was all said and done and he hung up his helmet for the last time following the 2017 season, Strief had lived up to Walker’s prediction and then some. Out of the 26 other offensive tackles taken in the 2006 NFL draft, only four lasted as long as he did.
In the interim, he became a fixture in the community in New Orleans, generously supporting various local charitable organizations and establishing himself as a fan favorite in his adopted hometown. That, combined with his on-the-field resume, would normally all but guarantee he’ll never have to pay for a beer anywhere in the Big Easy, but Strief went ahead and did the city one better. Back in April, he threw a retirement bash at Port Orleans, the brewery he opened with a group of friends in 2017, and invited the Saints faithful to come out and celebrate with him.
With newfound free time on his hands, he helps oversee the day-to-day operations at Port Orleans, staying busy as he transitions into a new chapter of life. He also envisions using the brewery as a way to continue supporting the people and causes that were near and dear to him as a player. First up is a beer that Strief and company are planning to release in time for the upcoming football season, with all the proceeds going to Team Gleason, the ALS research and awareness foundation started by former Saints safety Steve Gleason, who was diagnosed with ALS in 2011.
It was a long and unexpected journey to get here, but Strief is right where he wants to be. Now he can add immortality to the list of things he never thought he’d achieve as he prepares to be enshrined alongside other Northwestern greats, forever linked to the program, people and university that helped him realize his full potential. He may not have ever pictured himself as one, but he’s a hall of famer. And though Strief might try to argue this point, it’s hard to imagine a more deserving one.
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