Video: Sights and scenes from Cooper DeJean’s charity softball event
Former Iowa star and reigning Super Bowl champion Cooper DeJean held a charity softball event in Des Moines on June 1, 2025.
- Former Iowa football star Jay Higgins signed with the Baltimore Ravens after going undrafted in the 2025 NFL Draft.
- Higgins, who waited his turn behind Jack Campbell as a Hawkeye, isn’t foreign to being an underdog.
Jay Higgins was being serious when he asked a member of the Baltimore Ravens’ defensive coaching staff for the playbook the very same day he agreed to join the organization. Higgins made it clear he wanted to waste little time getting a jump on his new job.
“When can you send the playbook?” Higgins asked while on a video call.
“ASAP,” a member of the Ravens’ defensive coaching staff responded.
“Let me get that,” Higgins said.
“Yeah, I was serious,” Higgins said of his inquiry, which was posted on social media by his father, Roy Higgins III. “I know the importance of the playbook, especially for me. The faster I learn the plays, the faster I can get comfortable, the faster I can start playing how I want to play. Right now, you kind of just make sure you know your job. You want to make sure you’re running the plays right. It’s like, that’s fine, but you’re not being the player that they want you to be. They want you to be yourself. So the faster you can get extremely comfortable with the plays, the faster you can start playing like yourself and not like a robot.”
Higgins, an all-time Hawkeye great and highly respected figure, is now embarking on the next chapter of his football career. After going undrafted in the 2025 NFL Draft, Higgins signed with the Ravens.
“It’s just like knowing that this is your job now, you know what I mean?” Higgins told the Register. “I’ve always taken football serious, so it’s been an easy transition making this your job. It’s not like you’re going to class. You literally have all day to work on football. And so, I’m fine with going in at seven and leaving at nine o’clock at night. I wasn’t going to do anything else anyway.”
Higgins was in his home state of Indiana with his family and girlfriend during the draft. During the first and second days of the draft, Higgins tried to keep himself busy while tracking which linebackers had been selected. On the third and final day, Higgins sat in the living room and watched the TV. As time wore on, he got up and couldn’t bear to watch anymore, but kept his phone close.
Going undrafted did not reflect Higgins’ decorated college resume.
Higgins was well-established as one of the best linebackers in college football and had the production to back it up, racking up nearly 300 tackles combined across his final two seasons with the Hawkeyes. But hesitations about Higgins’ athletic traits and physical measurements bogged down his draft stock. Higgins said during the pre-draft process he felt like he was turning himself into a “track star.”
But in some ways, going undrafted fits into the trajectory of Higgins’ career.
His only power-conference offer in high school was Iowa. Higgins waited his turn behind Jack Campbell and didn’t jump ship to the transfer portal, something that has become exceptionally common in college sports. Despite being near the top of his position, Higgins wasn’t named a Butkus Award finalist in either of his final two seasons at Iowa, which was puzzling to many.
So going undrafted is not the first time Higgins’ path has taken a slight detour.
“My career has patterns and I’m on track of how everything started,” Higgins said. “It’s not where I wanted to be, but I’ve worked myself out of a hole before. I’ve been back-against-the-wall before. So I’m comfortable. I just feel like I’m a football player. When it’s time to play football, that’s when I start separating myself from everybody else.”
But a benefit of going undrafted was that Higgins got to choose where he wanted to sign. Higgins saw parallels between the Ravens and Hawkeyes — with the former being a franchise that has produced legendary linebackers Ray Lewis and Terrell Suggs.
“Just how they play and the intensity,” Higgins said of what made the Ravens a good fit. “Obviously, the history of the linebacker room and the defense there. Just the standard they play with is similar to how I operated at Iowa. Obviously, they’re going to hold you to a high, high standard. They’re going to ask you to do a lot. You’re going to be coached hard, you’re going to be coached the details. I just got done doing that for five years, so it kind of just made sense.”
Higgins will attempt to survive cuts and make the Ravens’ 53-man roster. Carving out a niche in the NFL is not easy, but Higgins’ familiarity with perseverance should serve him well as he tries to get his professional career off the ground.
“For me, obviously, special teams is going to be big as a linebacker,” Higgins said. “But you’ve just got to show the teams that you have value. … You’ve got to increase your value every day. I’m going to be myself. Go show up every day, be consistent, work hard. Whatever happens from there happens. But make sure I go out with no regrets for sure.”
Follow Tyler Tachman on X @Tyler_T15, contact via email at ttachman@gannett.com
