If it looks like Jack Endries has a bit more NFL polish than your average seventh-round pick, much of it is because Erik Swoope made a promise to his father.

"No matter what happens," Swoope recalls, "I'm going to teach someone what a lot of mentors and people around me were willing to do. He, alongside a handful of others, were kind of my first test subjects of how I would teach someone what I learned."

Endries, the rookie tight end who walked on at Cal, ran into the draft at Texas and sprinted away with the Bengals' only touchdown in the preseason opener, has passed with flying colors so far. The next exam in Saturday's second preseason game (7 p.m.-Cincinnati’s FOX 19) against the Bears at Paycor Stadium figures to start a little earlier with quarterback Josh Johnson taking the field with the backups on both sides of the ball.

"Let this preseason game be a reminder," Swoope told Endries after the opener because Swoope has been talking to him after openers since high school. "You're doing the right things. You need to stay hungry because there's a lot of opportunity out there. But you have to go grab it. It's not going to come your way."

If anyone knows about hunger and numbers games and roster jousts and packed tight end rooms waiting on excruciating Labor Days, it is Swoope. Swoope and his 40 or so NFL transactions as a remarkable and inspiring self-made tight end out of the University of Miami who signed with the Colts as an undrafted free agent despite never playing a down of football.

A 6-4, 250-pound ACC basketball player, Swoope survived with brains, hands, a tight end's unique want-to ,and help from the brotherhood to play 24 games and 328 snaps across five seasons in Indianapolis. In 2020, when he was trying to get back into the league with the Raiders and 49ers and didn't, he ended up in the same gym where the 16-year-old Endries and other Bay Area high school players were trying to stay sharp through COVID to keep their college hopes alive.

A high school club team was formed, and Swoope saw enough to pull him aside after the second practice to tell him, "Look, this is what I do for a living. I never played football a day in my life until I joined the Indianapolis Colts. I'm only going to teach you what I know, and if you're a willing listener, things will go well. But just bear with me."

As it turned out, Endries' hometown University of California Golden Bears.

"When COVID hit, there were a lot of six-year seniors and not as many scholarships to get," Endries says. "Cal took no one at tight end that year. No freshmen at all. I decided I can go there as a walk-on that first semester and earn a scholarship. I never thought I'd  start that early, but it turned out I did."

There were Mountain West offers. Ivy League offers. Harvard. Yale. He committed to Harvard even though some random kid quarterback was texting him out of the Eli blue to go to Yale because that's where he was headed. "Go to Yale, bro. Go to Yale."

Endries ignored it because he was going to Harvard. When he ended up going to Cal and logged in the phone number of his new roommate, he discovered that the Yale texter was the one and the same.

"Fernando Mendoza," says Endries of the future Heisman Trophy winner. "He didn't go to Yale and I didn't go to Harvard. Then we end up at Cal together. How random is that?"

Now, if Harvard had a quarterback like Mendoza when Endries and his father took in a game, it might have been a different story. As he watched in horror, this particular quarterback for the Crimson threw a post 20 yards short of the receiver. He turned to his dad and said he couldn't play there.

"I did a photo shoot the next day, but my heart wasn't in it," Endries says. "I had one foot out the door."

Endries delivered the no Harvard news delicately to his parents, both lawyers. She is USC and he is Duke. He told them after a practice, and the only visible reaction was his mom went to bed at 7 p.m.

But he had plenty going for him at Cal. Clearly bright (he got his economics degree in three years at Berkeley), Endries' hands were always natural. So he began watching tape of past and present monstrously prolific NFL receiving tight ends such as Rob Gronkowski, Brock Bowers, Travis Kelce and George Kittle.

"When I went to Cal as a walk-on trying to get that starter spot is when I stayed in on Saturdays watching more film," Endries says. "Guys like Brock Bowers. I pretty much watched all of his games at Georgia when I was a freshman at Cal to see how he got open.

"I like watching the highlight tapes of the dogs."

Through it all, Endries took Swoope's "Let's keep in touch," to heart, and they continue to work in the offseason while ringing each other over the phone during the season.

At the same time Endries has channeled the big boys, he has immersed himself in a journeyman's counsel. Swoope immediately shared the concepts of NFL playbooks, and since he learned the position from the ground up, he could warn of the pitfalls.

Not only that, he taught him the daily jugs routine Swoope and two-time Pro Bowl tight end Jack Doyle used in Indy to guarantee 200 catches.

"You need to look at the entire offense and start asking yourself, why does my coach call these calls, and what is he actually effectively trying to do?" Swoope says. "Jack picked that up very early when I was coaching him in high school. That honestly made me more excited than his physical prowess because you don't know when you're talking to a 16-year-old kid if they'll grow or not grow."

Endries grew enough to 6-5 and 245 pounds. A bit light and not highlights-fast with a 4.62-second 40-yard dash at the NFL scouting combine. Hence the seventh-round. But, Swoope says, you're looking at the wrong watch.

"I would say his playing speed doesn't necessarily match his 40 time," Swoope says. "You put the ball in your hands and put some adrenaline in it, and all of a sudden we've got some speed.

"I felt like his game speed was something that gets a little bit overlooked. His hands are to me what got him the opportunity to be a Cincinnati Bengal, or make it at Texas or Cal. He's exactly what a tight end's supposed to be, which is consistent with your hands. You can make the plays that they throw to you, and then the biggest thing with a tight end is your recall and your understanding of the offense."

The Bengals have been extremely impressed with his willingness to block, and how he's not afraid to square up his face mask in the belly of the beast. Endries senses, too, that he has surprised them with how he is adapting to the running game, another gift from Swoope.

"If you ask me, what makes a really successful tight end is your willingness to put your hand in dirt for your teammates," Swoope says.  "We all want to be receivers. That's the fun part, right? That's the part where they get to shout your name. But what makes you a great teammate is your willingness to play on special teams and to put a hat on a hat. And that was one of the things early on."

Swoope made it to the practice squad that first camp. He thinks Endries is certainly capable of making the active roster. He's struck with the similarities of his opportunity on the 2014 Colts and Endries' shot with the 2026 Bengals

"You have three veteran quarterbacks, a younger team that is on the rise and moments away from high, high, high levels of success," Swoope says. "You need to  understand how to be a sponge  to the veterans that are in that locker room."

Endries is certainly doing that in practice with the Fabulous 40s firm of Johnson and Joe Flacco, the quarterback on his wide-open four-yard touchdown catch against the Lions. He's also taking note of Tanner Hudson, the crafty veteran also having a fine camp in that jam-packed tight end room.

"Just a smart route runner is the way I put it," Endries says. "He has a lot of ways to get open without being fast. He looks people off his routes. Sharp angles, sets himself up for success."

After watching that first game, Swoope is convinced Endries is on the right track because of his decisiveness off the ball and in the scrum. His persistence is what Swoope has admired.

"What will keep you in the league is your willingness to do other things," Swoope has told him. "So make the plays they throw you, which was a very nice run action pass."

Swoope continues to coach other kids while running a hair salon with his wife and serving as a financial advisor. High schoolers. Junior High. A receiver at Cal. A tight end at Cal. He checks in on his good buddy over at Stanford from time to time. Andrew Luck.

He got a thrill when he bumped into his own mentor during the winter. Jimmy Graham, the old UM tight end who showed him the game. "Held my hand pretty much through my whole career," is how Swoope puts it.

Graham, a five-time Pro Bowler, taught him a two-point stance, a three-point stance, what a left formation means, how a right formation plays. The basics. Eventually they could talk in football.

"It's just part of the brotherhood. That's what you're supposed to do," Swoope says.

That's what Graham told him back in February when Swoope got to see him face-to-face again and shook his hand to thank him. Pretty much what his dad told him.

"Well, pass it on to somebody," Graham told him.

"I'm doing that," Swoope said. "I got a young fella at Texas that I'm working with right now."

On a Paycor Saturday night, the brotherhood is watching a third generation trying to grow up before Labor Day.