Logan Wilson currently can be seen on your television screens for at least 17 Sundays per year for the past 3 seasons after being taken in the 3rd round of the 2020 NFL draft by the Cincinnati Bengals and earning his captain status on the defense in a very short time frame. Before he was playing in 2 AFC championship games and a Super Bowl though Logan Wilson was a University of Wyoming Cowboy from 2015-2019 where he registered the fourth most tackles in school history with 421, 35 of those tackles being for a loss, 7 sacks, 10 interceptions, 24 passes defended, 4 forced fumbles, 4 fumbles recovered, and scored 3 defensive touchdowns as one of the actual resident Wyoming natives on the squad.
Wilson was a star safety, wide receiver, kicker, and punter for the Natrona Mustangs for 4 years and finished his high school career with a 12-0 perfect 2014 and a state championship while being named all state at safety, wide receiver, and punter. Today Logan gave Dahl and Aaron a little bit of his time to discuss what it was like playing high school ball in the small state of Wyoming and what it takes to get yourself from playing under the Friday night lights to the Super Bowl.
“It was a long process obviously to get here, I think the biggest thing was the amount of hard work it takes and how much it took. You can not get complacent you know.” Logan said in regards to his journey from small school safety to captain of an NFL defense. Logan implores the young kids out there looking to do the same to embrace the idea that sometimes you have to sacrifice doing the things everyone else is doing like going out on the weekends with your buddies in college and things of that nature will need to take a backseat to self improvement and hard work for a while.
Wilson and his wife still own a home in Casper, WY as well as Wilson states in the interview he likes to come back frequently to remind himself where he comes from and be closer to family and he often likes to attend the state wrestling and state basketball tournaments while he and his wife are back which many of the student-athletes and parents tend to enjoy seeing. A big part of Wilson’s transformation from high school safety to linebacker as well was the need to bulk up which Wilson dives into during the interview, going from 190 lbs to 240 lbs to play his new position and it wasn’t an easy one, Logan talks about how he wasn’t even close to his weight goal until about his junior year of college and that patience is a huge key to long term success.
One of the other huge transitions that had to be made for Logan was the speed of the game as he states at the college level “everyone was the best at their high school” and then at the pro level “everyone was the best at their college” and with each level gone up the speed of the game always increases and anyone looking to follow in his footsteps should prepare themselves for that transition. As well as the speed of the game and getting accustomed to it, the other huge thing is health and with Logan Wilson getting his degree in Kinesiology and understanding health and how the body works has allowed Wilson to avoid major injury to this point in his career.
Wilson also credits his multi-sport approach to his ability to stay healthy saying that too many kids today have a tendency to try and specialize but playing so many different sports actually can make the body and mind more well-adjusted to different things that can be thrown at you on the field. The full interview can be heard just below, also including Logan’s thoughts on the holding call in the Super Bowl, other Wyoming pro athletes, and playing with Joe Burrow and the opportunities being a part of a winning NFL team have been like:
