{"id":874492,"date":"2026-04-25T18:33:33","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T18:33:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/874492\/"},"modified":"2026-04-25T18:33:33","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T18:33:33","slug":"linebacker-bryce-boettcher-chose-football-over-baseball-now-hes-a-colt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/874492\/","title":{"rendered":"Linebacker Bryce Boettcher chose football over baseball. Now, he&#8217;s a Colt"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In 2022, Boettcher heard that new head football coach Dan Lanning was holding walk-on tryouts. After his tryout, he was invited to fall camp and made the team. He took his first snaps the same year, but his production ramped up in 2024 after he made the decision to forgo professional baseball and commit to football. The decision was not an easy one.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I love baseball, but football is definitely my passion,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I grew up playing all different sports, but there&#8217;s not better feeling than inflicting pain on someone legally and the bond you develop with your teammates throughout the process.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Over his last two seasons at Oregon, Boettcher totaled 230 tackles, three sacks, nine passes defended and two interceptions.<\/p>\n<p>Boettcher&#8217;s family had Ducks season tickets as he was growing up, and he got to watch a defensive tackle who would end up being his future teammate.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I grew up watching DeForest Buckner play,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I watched that dude play on Saturdays, and now I&#8217;ll get a chance to play with him on Sundays.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 2022, Boettcher heard that new head football coach Dan Lanning was holding walk-on tryouts. After his tryout,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":874493,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2026],"tags":[94152,19,508,198,697,7],"class_list":{"0":"post-874492","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-bryce-boettcher","9":"tag-draft","10":"tag-draft-tracker-card","11":"tag-featured","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-football"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116466784929264811","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=874492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/874493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=874492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=874492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=874492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}