Q. I'm curious how much interaction you had pre-draft with the Eagles, and I'm sure you're familiar with Jalen Hurts, and what are your thoughts about becoming a teammate of his?
TANNER McKEE: Yeah, I mean, obviously super excited. I know that he has a lot to bring to the table, especially for a young quarterback like me. I'm excited to be a sponge and learn a lot from a guy like that who's had success at such a high level and so recently. I'm super excited to learn from him.
It was actually funny, when I took a trip out to Alabama when I was getting recruited in high school, he was the quarterback at Bama at the time. So I got to learn a little bit from him just for a few days, so I'm excited to actually be in the same quarterback room and to learn a lot from a guy like that.
Q. Having the interaction with the Eagles pre-draft, did you have much interaction with them?
TANNER McKEE: Yeah, did Zoom calls, talked with them, met with them at the combine, and obviously we had good interactions with my agent. Kind of always knew that they were on the radar and obviously was extremely excited when I got a call.
Q. To follow up really quickly on what you just mentioned with that visit, what do you remember, I know it was many years back, about those early interactions with Jalen? Could you tell he was stoic even back then?
TANNER McKEE: Yeah, I think for me the first thing that comes to mind is just the confidence that he carries himself. When he walks into a room, even if it was a room of just quarterbacks, he just kind of has that subtle confidence. He's running the show. He's the guy. So I feel like that's something that you really need when you're going to lead a team.
I feel like it's a great trait as a quarterback. When you step in the room, everyone is quiet, you're in charge of the huddle or the meeting or whatever that was. That comes with how you play, how well you know people on and off the field, and so I'm excited to finally start that relationship with him and also the other players.
Q. To follow up, what was the moment like earlier? Were you with family, small party, big party? What was the scene like?
TANNER McKEE: Yeah, so I was here in Southern California, Corona, California, where I grew up. My wife is actually from the same city, so my immediate family and her family came over to come watch the last day, and obviously we were very excited when we saw a call from Philadelphia pop up. It was great. It was a great moment. I was very excited.
Q. Those Zoom calls you were talking about, do you remember who you were interacting with? Was it Nick? Was it Alex Tanney? Your skill set as a quarterback, what can Eagles fans expect? What do you think you do well?
TANNER McKEE: Yeah, I apologize because we did a decent amount of Zoom calls. I can't remember exactly who it was because we do a lot of Zoom calls throughout the process.
But as far as who I am as a quarterback and what I'm going to bring, I feel like I'm going to try to do -- I'm going to bring whatever the coaches and whatever the Eagles need from me. In offense, I ran a very spread, we're going to run a lot of RPOs and things like that. Stanford was a lot more pro-style offense. I'm excited to fit in with a very good offense, obviously, with an unbelievable offensive line and tons of weapons on the outside. I'm just excited to kind of learn the offense and really be whatever player the coaches, my teammates and the organization needs me to be. I feel like I have a lot of different assets, and I'm excited to display those.
Q. Curious about your mission work and how it kind of developed you as a person.
TANNER McKEE: Yeah, so for those of you that don't know, I graduated high school in 2018. I lived in Brazil from 2018 to 2020. It was overall a great experience, a lot of things I got to learn from. I would say the biggest thing for me in being a quarterback was just being able to take people from different backgrounds and different cultures and bringing them together for one common purpose, and that's a lot of what you have to do as a quarterback. You're in the locker room, whether that's college or the NFL, with a bunch of guys that come from different backgrounds and have different cultures, and you have to bring them together to go out and fight as one.
I felt like that was something that I got to work on on my mission and can ultimately help me become a better leader and a better teammate, just as I step in the locker room.
Q. Everybody loves their dual-threat quarterbacks these days, as opposed to you're more of a classic drop-back passer. Do you feel like that worked against you a little bit during this whole thing? So many teams want that dual-threat guy, and that's probably not exactly who you are.
TANNER McKEE: I mean, I wasn't in the room with coaches. I don't know exactly what went down. But I'm going to try to play to the best of my ability. I'm obviously going to try to expand the tools that I have and be able to run when I need to run, and if we're going to run, zone read or whatever that is that Coach asks of us, I'm going to try to expand and have a bigger toolbox to try to just get the job done with anything that I need to do.
Obviously there's a lot of things that I can learn from, especially from Jalen, on how to read a defensive end and how to do things like that in the NFL with all their speed and size and things like that, that I'm really looking forward to hearing what he has to say.
Q. What went into the decision to declare early?
TANNER McKEE: Yeah, for me, I just thought it was the best time. Had good conversations with Coach Shaw, Coach Tavita, who's our ROC, my agent Justin Schulman. It's been a lifelong dream of mine to play in the NFL, and once I knew that that was a possibility, was really excited and felt really good where I was as a player and thought it was time for me to take that next step.
Q. Talk about things you can learn from Jalen Hurts and even Marcus Mariota as far as reading defenses. How important do you think that would be to your overall development, to be able to expand your game that way?
TANNER McKEE: I think it's huge having two guys that have had a lot of experience and have played a lot of games in the NFL I think is really big. I'm excited for the challenge of the speed and anticipation that is required to play in the NFL, and I feel like those guys can really help me in that aspect.
But yeah, ultimately really excited to hear what they have to say. I have a lot of questions that I'm excited to ask them. But I know that they have a lot of other things that I'm just going to learn from them just based off what they know, their wisdom of the offense, and just playing the number of snaps that they've played in the NFL.
Q. This is way, way out of left field, but just wondering if Coach Shaw ever mentioned his time with the Eagles, coaching here way back in the day, and if so, what he shared with you.
TANNER McKEE: He hasn't specifically yet, but I will definitely give him a call later. We've been going back and forth on text message, so I'll definitely give him a call and ask him.
He sent me a long text saying he thinks it's going to be a great fit and he's super excited about the coaches and the players that they have, and so I'm very excited. He's definitely somebody that I have a ton of respect for and really value his opinion.
I'm definitely going to give him a call sometime in the next couple days and ask his opinion on things and how his experience was because I think it would be very valuable to me.
Q. Tanner, I just wanted to ask you, they said on television after you got picked that you had a melanoma situation during high school. How serious was that, and that's pretty -- some adversity you had to face at a pretty young age I would think.
TANNER McKEE: Yeah, so when I was about 16, my mom noticed a few suspicious moles, so I went in to get a few biopsied and things like that. One of them came positive for melanoma skin cancer on my forehead, so they had to take out a bigger piece and take out some lymph nodes to make sure they were all clear and everything like that. Thankfully we caught it super early so nothing spread to any organs, so after they cleared the borders and took out some lymph nodes and everything, everything was good.
Now I wear bucket hats. I'm good with sunscreen. But ultimately very thankful to have a good perspective on life and just really thankful for all the doctors and everybody that's been part of the process.
But I'm fully healthy, and I feel great right now.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports