Green Bay Packers share McHenry County bond

In middle school, Robert Tonyan attended every Marian Central football game, home and away, when Bryan Bulaga and the 2006 Hurricanes raced their way to a 9-0 regular season and an eventual state runner-up finish in Class 5A.

Tonyan remembers walking up to Bulaga after a first-round playoff win over Montini and telling the future Iowa Hawkeye and now 10th-year Green Bay Packers veteran, “Good luck at Iowa.”

“And now we’re teammates,” Tonyan said. “We share that. It’s awesome.”

On Thursday at Soldier Field, Bulaga blocked the likes of Khalil Mack and Akiem Hicks, while Tonyan caught a 28-yard pass from Aaron Rodgers in Green Bay’s win over the Bears, 10-3.

The two McHenry County natives are now in their second season together in Green Bay.

“Having a guy [on the team] from where I’m from, it’s cool,” Bulaga said. “We have a lot in common to talk about.”

In 2006, Bulaga helped Marian reach its first state championship game in
17 years. Tonyan attended Marian his freshman year before transferring to McHenry East, where he graduated from in 2012. He played quarterback for the Warriors and receiver at Indiana State.

Their professional paths couldn’t have been more different.

Bulaga, who grew up in Crystal Lake, was a stud offensive lineman at Iowa and a first-round draft pick in 2010. Tonyan signed with the Lions as an undrafted free agent in 2017 and later landed with the Packers, where he was a long shot to make the roster before the 2018 season – but made the team anyway.

Now, Tonyan is seeing more and more snaps at tight end, in addition to his special teams duties.

“He’s a good football player, wants to learn,” Bulaga said of Tonyan. “He’s done a great job just developing and getting better and better. The [tight end] room that he’s in with Marcedes [Lewis] and Jimmy [Graham], that’s a great room to be in to learn, and he’s absorbed all that. That’s been really good for him.”

Tonyan said Lewis and Graham encouraged him to approach his offseason as if he were expecting to start at tight end. Although those two veterans have about two dozen NFL seasons of experience and are ahead of Tonyan on the depth chart, they have been priceless mentors for the 25-year-old Tonyan.

“Don’t come into it thinking you’re the third tight end,” Tonyan said. “Strive to be the starter because if those guys go down, the next person’s up. They just instilled so much confidence in me this offseason, just go be myself.”

Tonyan took their advice to heart and spent time with one of the best of the best. He lived and worked out with San Francisco 49ers Pro Bowl tight end George Kittle.

Tonyan and Kittle have the same agent and developed a friendship when they were both going through the draft prep process in 2017. Kittle had an extra room at his home in Nashville this offseason.

“[To] get to live and work out with one of your buddies in the offseason and try to learn from him, an All-Pro guy, Pro Bowl guy, [I’m] just trying to learn from the best,” Tonyan said.

Bulaga, 30, missed much of the 2017 season with a torn ACL, playing in only five games, but returned to play in
14 games last season. Lining up at right tackle Thursday, he had the unenviable job of trying to stop the Bears' defensive line, which recorded five sacks.

“It’s tough,” Bulaga said. “They’re very good. Probably one of the best that we’ll see, and we get to see them twice a year. How fun?

“It’s nice coming back [to Chicago]; I love being down here. I think it’s a great city, and to be able to win a big game here is even better.”

Bulaga’s stamp of approval: Bulaga still keeps a close eye on the Marian Central football program. (“Three-nothing win,” he said Thursday, referencing the Hurricanes’ Week 1 win over Johnsburg. “I love it, man.”)

He never played directly for first-year Marian head coach Darren Fortin – who has coached at various levels at the school over the past 30 years – but said he is “very happy with that hire.”

Bulaga was a vocal critic of the Marian athletic department when then-athletic director Drew Potthoff passed on hiring former Hurricanes assistant Dirk Stanger in 2015. Marian instead hired Mike Maloney, who resigned last fall after four seasons.

Bulaga said “it’s huge” to have a guy such as Fortin, a longtime Hurricanes assistant and a Marian graduate, leading the program.

“I feel like when they moved away from coach [Ed] Brucker, the thing went a bad direction and bad decisions were made,” Bulaga said. “I’m glad we’re past that and we have Coach Fortin in there now.”