Love this Sieler article from a couple years ago…if everyone had this dudes mindset we’d be multiple time champs:
The heavy metal blared. Always. Zach Sieler and the other outcasts at Ferris State lifted weights to an ear-splitting stream of Metallica, Five Finger Death Punch and Slipknot.
This weight room consisted of three squat racks, two benches and only one functioning barbell. Before loading up grimy 45-pound plates, they’d need to roll the bar to make sure this was the one that was actually straight. You know, so it wouldn’t fall off their back mid-squat. All equipment was from the 80s.
“A concrete dungeon,” Sieler says, “in the basement.”
There were no windows, but there did appear to be mold and rust and, guess what?
He loved every second of it.
Sieler glows at this memory more than any other. Back when he was half of himself. Long before Sieler was this fully-bearded, 6-foot-6, 300-pound colossus in the middle of the Miami Dolphins’ defense, he was a beanpole. He headed to Division-II Ferris State in Big Rapids, Mich., at barely north of 200 pounds. Ferris State let Sieler walk onto the team simply because he was tall and could give them scout-team looks. So, this was his gameday. He’d lift at 4 a.m., before 6:30/7 a.m. meetings. Practice would last 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., then he’d head to class and lift again at 6:30 p.m.
This glorious “dungeon” was the exact opposite of what his pro contemporaries enjoyed in the SEC and Big Ten. Right down to the lack of a cushion on that one barbell for squats. Each set, he’d scrape up his neck. Ferris State didn’t only lack equipment, hell, they didn’t have a strength coach back then. Sieler was forced to do his own research, piecing together workouts from MusclePharm and Bodybuilding.com. Once, he and buddies tried Rich Piana’s legendary “Eight-Hour Arms.” An insane workout that features 16 mini workouts every half-hour over an eight-hour period. (Piana promised to add a full inch to your arms in one day.)
Sieler only lasted an hour. He and his teammates “couldn’t move.” It was awesome.
“Those were some of the best memories,” Sieler says. “It was just a grind. I’m closer to those guys than anybody I’ve ever been with. To this day.”
The result: One of most unlikely rises in the NFL. From Ferris State to the Baltimore Ravens to these Dolphins, Sieler has developed into one of the sport’s best interior defensive linemen.
With anvils for biceps, he’d sure make the deceased Piana proud. Now, Zach Sieler is everything this high-voltage roster needs. The endless reels of 70-yard touchdowns and backflips and selfies and choreographed celebrations from “Remember the Titans” are fun as hell. There’s no better viewing experience in the NFL than the schematic symphony conducted by the hilariously self-deprecating Mike McDaniel. Football now has four levels of speed: high school, college, NFL, and Dolphins. Tyreek Hill, Raheem Mostert and De’Von Achane have accounted for the five fastest plays in the league.
Miami has the second-most yards (2,992) through six games in NFL history, trailing only the 2000 Rams (3,056).
Miami is the first team since the 1964 Buffalo Bills to lead the league in both passing and rushing yards per game through Week 6.
Miami has 30 touchdowns vs. only 14 punts.
All while most of the NFL struggles to muster any offense.
Yet as every electrifying offense in the history of the sport has learned — the ’98 Vikings, ’99 Rams, ’07 Patriots, etc. — games in January are… different. Games can darken into street fights. Whether these Dolphins are equipped to win that type of game will justifiably become a hot topic of debate as this 2023 season wears on. The Buffalo Bills did smash its AFC East rival. In Sieler, they’ve got more than a puncher’s chance to win future brawls because he’s different than all the headliners. All the star power on this roster.
The Dolphins didn’t select Sieler high in the NFL Draft, nor did they deal a bounty of picks for him.
They’ll need this alligator hunter all the same.
“There’s guys on every team that, obviously, they’re not the big-name guys, but they’re the guys that just keep it together,” Sieler says. “Glue guys, locker room guys, that make just as many plays. Your name’s not out there, which to me I love that. That's why it’s a game like no other game. It takes 11 players. You might have a Tyreek that’s crazy fast and you might have a tall receiver that’s able to go up and get it. Everyone’s got a different attribute.”
He grew up with all of 2,400 residents in Pinckney, Mich. Fifteen kids played on the JV team; 25 on Varsity. A few grads had previously gone on to play Division III ball, but little else. College coaches were not flocking to his games and the lack of interest, he admits, was “disheartening.” But looking back, it was understandable. Sieler was oddly shaped for a defensive lineman at 6-4, 205. Cutting weight to wrestle ending up hurting him as a football recruit.
His junior year, Sieler cut from 225 to 189.
His senior year, he got back up to “205’ish” and wrestled at 215. Sieler loved football but admits wrestling was “it.” A lifestyle here in the Midwest. Thus, he has no regrets. His father was a backup on the Olympic team. Sieler was still able to get nearly all four years of college at Ferris State paid for thanks to a slew of scholarships and good grades. The school’s engineering program was also enticing.
Still, he didn’t touch the field until his third year.
Blissful ignorance helped. All along, the NFL was the goal. (“What kid doesn’t want to go play in the NFL?”) In reality, Ferris State’s coaches didn’t view Sieler as anything more than a practice body. This wasn’t a Cody Mauch situation. No grandiose master plan. When Mauch stepped onto the North Dakota State campus at 220, the school had a long-term vision. As he detailed to Go Long, Mauch fully maximized his unlimited meal plan. And facilities. This was an FCS power that had beefed up linemen before. Mauch put on 85 pounds and was drafted by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the second round.
Sieler, in Year 1, was slapped around by upperclassmen in practice.
Even worse? He felt unwanted. The walk-on was told — plainly — that he was an ideal scout-team player because of his height. At 6 foot 4, he could imitate taller players on the other team.
“The coaches didn’t care about me that much,” Sieler says. “That is all they ever saw me as. Never really expected me to get on the field. There was some, ‘Hey, we got a kid from Florida. We got a kid that just transferred from Navy. I don’t know if you're ever going to see the field here, but we’d love to keep you on as a scout team guy.’”
That ensuing spring is exactly when he bonded with players — “misfits,” he calls them — in the same forgotten bucket as him.
“Dudes,” he admits, “that probably shouldn’t be out there.”
Together, Sieler, Derek Ash, Jon Metz and a few others turned that “dungeon” into a sanctuary. Maybe they’d never see the field. Maybe Ferris State didn’t have a strength coach or a nutritionist. Screw it. They could eat and lift and eat some more. A whole new world to Sieler, who was only accustomed to losing pounds to make weight on the mat. He meticulously researched how to make meals on a tight budget and — since there wasn’t an Aldi — visited Save-a-Lot all the time. His go-to move? Buying steaks that expired in one day. Those always sold on the cheap. For dinner, he’d cook those up with some rice. For breakfast, he drink a cup of dry oatmeal with water.
He didn’t even heat these oats up, either.
Yes, Sieler confirms. It was disgusting.
Other mornings, he’d drink Walmart egg whites straight out of the carton. Sort of like Rocky Balboa drinking raw eggs out of a glass ahead of his heavyweight bout with Apollo Creed.
“A little bit more modernized, I guess,” he says.
Anything to pack on the poundage. “Cheap poundage,” he clarifies. Of course, anybody can eat. And eat. Sieler knew he needed to transform this into muscle. So whenever he wasn’t doing construction, landscaping or mowing each offseason, Sieler trained. His crew would literally need every 45-pound plate available to squat 550, 600, 650 pounds.
When Ash first met Sieler, he saw someone who resembled “a long, wet noodle.” He describes Sieler as “gangly,” as “skinny fat,” as a kid who “didn’t have any muscle definition.” The two of them were both buried on the defensive line depth chart and decided to live in the weight room, starting each workout at 4 a.m.
Ash never had a workout partner stronger than him. Until Sieler.
“All of a sudden I’m like, ‘Dang, this kid’s getting f--king strong. I can’t keep up,’” Ash says. “Sure enough, we get to the camp and this kid’s put on 60 pounds of muscle in the offseason. He climbed up that depth chart real fast and booted me right out of my position group. … I went over to offense, played some tight end.”
Multiple workouts per day. Hammering their arms. He, too, is nostalgic for those days. They felt like Arnold Schwarzenegger because this is what a weight room should look like. Smell like.
“Man, what I’d do to go back to lift in that place,” Ash says. “It was underfunded, under-equipped, it didn’t have windows. Didn’t have ventilation. It just had probably mold and sweat and rust all over the bar. You couldn’t wear a white shirt in there because you’d be coming out brown.”
This all launched Ash’s own career. He nerded out on the science of weightlifting, researching workouts on YouTube the night before their sessions. Today, Ash is the strength and conditioning coach at Cedar Springs Public Schools, about 45 minutes north of Ferris. Even when their college finally did hire a strength coach their last year, the two would still make a point to do their own thing. One would screenshot a MusclePharm workout from Instagram, text it to the other and they’d go balls to the wall the next morning.
In a year and half, Sieler added 45 pounds. His second year, he tweaked his finger — knew he wasn’t going to play — and kept throwing weight around. By Year 3, Sieler was 270 pounds and finally played when a teammate suffered an injury. In limited action, he had 6.5 sacks. This got him on scholarship, and Sieler’s collegiate career took off. He had 19 ½ sacks in Year 4, and another seven his final year. By the time he left Ferris State, he was 290 pounds. NFL dreams became real. One Ferris State alum, Jason Vander Laan, bounced around the league. Another, Justin Zimmer, played on the Buffalo Bills’ defensive line. Ferris State also played Grand Valley State, the school that produced one of the best edge rushers in the sport: New England’s Matthew Judon.
Sieler did have engineering offers from GM and Chrysler on the table. This was also a passion.
Heading into his final season at Ferris, he interned 70 to 80 hours per week at the Sterling Stamping Chrysler plan in Detroit. The drive ate up so much time — he was getting up at 3 a.m. — that Sieler decided to crash at a buddy’s studio apartment in the city. All summer, he slept on the couch and saved himself two hours of driving each day. Valuable time Sieler used at a nearby L.A. Fitness.
He could’ve earned a solid salary designing the under bodies of Suburbans and Yukon for Chevy GMC. But, of course, he needed to give the NFL a shot… even if he wasn’t exacty a diehard fan of any team. Sieler preferred episodes of Dragon Ball Z over watching the pros. Or hunting. Or fishing. He played fantasy football but, in the locker room, often leaned over to ask Ash for advice on who to draft and who to start.
Says Ash: “I don’t know if you would catch him watching too many games on a Sunday if he wasn't in the league. He'd be busy doing hunting, fishing, or tinkering outside in the garage.”
The Ravens made Sieler the first player ever drafted out of Ferris State with the 238th overall pick in the seventh round of the 2018 draft. After two seasons, the Ravens let him go. Miami has been reaping the rewards ever since with Sieler ascending each year: 2020 (48 tackles, 3.5 sacks) to 2021 (62 tackles, two sacks) to 2022 (70 tackles, 3.5 sacks) to what’s beginning to look like the season of his life.
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True, he’s always been into the outdoors most. Specifically, hunting. Sieler and his wife headed to Africa for their honeymoon, and then to New Zealand to hunt red stag. Hannah never hunted before meeting Zach but quickly fell in love herself. The No. 1 animal on Zach’s mind this day is elk. Whenever he’s done playing football, one of the first things he’ll do is take a two- or three-week trip out west. Montana, Wyoming, Alaska, wherever.
And down in Florida? He enjoys hog hunting.
“They’re very feisty,” Sieler says. “It’s a different battle. You can’t just sit there and wait sometimes there’s so many.”
For us novices, here’s how it works. Your dogs “flush ‘em out,” he explains. They’ll chase and corner the boar in one place, while barking to signal their location. That’s when Sieler will either do the honors with a knife or — if the dogs are getting in the way — tie the hog up, load him onto the truck, put him down later. Sieler knows hunting isn’t for everyone. He sees all sides to the conversation. Heck, his Mom has been a vegetarian her entire life.
