PRO POTENTIAL: Princeton University football star and team captain Seth DeValve enjoys a light moment during the program’s annual media day last September. Despite battling injury, DeValve went on to make 33 receptions for 337 yards and a touchdown in his final college campaign in 2015. In late April, DeValve was selected with the 138th pick in the fourth round of the NFL draft by the Cleveland Browns. (Photo by Frank Wojciechowski)

Seth DeValve knows what it’s like to help revitalize a football program.

At Manchester (Conn.) High, DeValve starred at quarterback and safety as he helped a new coaching staff transform the program into a winner after years of mediocrity.

Coming to Princeton University in 2011 and moving to receiver, DeValve emerged as a key offensive weapon as the Tigers went from 1-9 in his freshman year to an Ivy League title in 2013.

Now DeValve will get the chance to help spark a reversal of fortune on the professional level as he was recently selected with the 138th pick in the fourth round of the NFL draft by the lowly Cleveland Browns, who went 3-13 last year and brought in a new head coach, Hue Jackson, in an effort to get back to the playoffs for the first time since the 2002 season.

“It is funny because throughout my entire career, I have been a part of teams who at the beginning of my time there were not good and did not have winning records,” said the 6’3, 245-pound DeValve, who was the third Princeton draft selection of the last four years, joining Mike Catapano (2013, Kansas City — 7th round) and Caraun Reid (2014, Detroit — 4th round) and highest-drafted Tiger football player in the modern NFL Draft as Reid was the 158th choice.

“For whatever reason, that seems to be my lot in life as a football player, both of those situations are very similar to what I am walking into at Cleveland.”

After a promising start to his Princeton career, which saw him make 49 catches for 527 yards and four touchdowns in the 2013 Ivy championship season, DeValve hit some hard times as his playing time was curtailed by injury. Playing only two games in 2014, DeValve got a medical redshirt and returned for a second senior season this past fall.

“The fifth year was very instrumental for me in my life in many ways, not just football,” said DeValve, a team co-captain who made 33 receptions for 337 yards and a touchdown in 2015 playing through injury and finished his career ranked 10th all-time at Princeton in receptions (122) and 13th in receiving yards (1336).

“I had time away from school a little bit to work and to train and to just get better athletically and then to be one year older and to play college football again. It was a good year in my life, going to school is really not such a bad thing.”

With nagging foot issues related to a growth plate condition cleared up by surgeries in 2014 and 2015, DeValve turned his attention to the 2016 NFL Draft.

“I was training at Parabolic Performance and Rehab, which is a combine preparation center on the Jersey shore,” said DeValve, who trained there January to mid-March, noting that he had finished his Princeton schoolwork in the 2015 fall semester.

“I finished up in the fall and then I moved to live on the shore and trained at Parabolic.”

That training paid dividends as DeValve turned heads at his Pro Day in early April on the Princeton campus. He ran a 4.68 40-yard dash, did 22 reps of 225 pounds on the bench press, performed a vertical jump of 40 inches and a standing broad jump of 10.5 feet, numbers that compared favorably with those posted by tight end prospects at the NFL Combine.

“I think for anybody’s evaluation, about 85-90 percent of your evaluation is based off your college game film but that last 10 or 15 percent can be your pro day,” said DeValve.

“I think for a small school guy coming from Princeton that pro day may mean a little more than it does typically, maybe more like 20 or 25 percent of your evaluation. There is always a question, whether it is fair or not, how is this guy going to fare against tougher competition. They really want to see your numbers stack up with everybody else’s. I think putting together a good pro day was important for my evaluation process.”

As a result of that performance and feedback he was getting from NFL teams, DeValve believed he was going to be chosen in the NFL Draft, which took place on April 28-30 in Chicago.

“My expectation was to be drafted, it is hard to say though,” said DeValve. “Anybody who is going to be in rounds 4-7 really runs the risk of being undrafted. You never know.”

After not getting selected in the first two days of the draft, DeValve woke up on April 30 at home in Connecticut with a good feeling.

“It was an exciting day; I had my whole family together and a couple of my friends,” recalled DeValve.

“It was something we were able to celebrate, it was a special day. It is basically pick up the phone and they say who they are and that they are getting ready to make you a Cleveland Brown. There was a bunch of excitement from my end of the line. I talked to Hue Jackson, the head coach, and I talked to Greg Seamon, who is the tight ends coach, and then it is getting ready to go to work.”

As the excitement from the moment died down, DeValve was able to savor his achievement.

“It is hard, that sort of thing doesn’t sink in that quickly,” said DeValve. “You are watching your name flash across the screen a couple of minutes later and that is pretty cool. Everybody is giving hugs and congratulating. It was real cool.”

Being pushed hard in Princeton, in the classroom and on the field, has prepared DeValve well for his NFL opportunity.

“Nothing in my entire life challenged me the way Princeton did,” said DeValve, a mechanical engineering major.

“It didn’t get easier because you progress through it. It was always challenging. It produces in everybody who goes through there, especially the student athletes, who have a ton on their plate, a fight or flight mentality in you with the ability to stare a high challenge in the face and say I am not going to run away from it. I am going to put my head down and I am going to work extremely hard and I am going to get this done and I am going to excel.”

Princeton head coach Bob Surace, who coached nine years with the Cincinnati Bengals before taking the helm at Princeton in 2010, saw pro potential in DeValve.

“When he made a big jump physically in his junior year is when I first thought he could be an NFL prospect,” said Surace, who served with Browns head coach Jackson on the Bengals staff.

“He always had a big frame, he started to separate himself from the other 210-pound wide receivers when he hit that 225-pound mark and he still didn’t have any body fat. You kind of knew that he had a good chance to be close to 250 pounds.”

In Surace’s view, DeValve’s Pro Day was a critical step in the process, considering that he only played a total of eight games over his last two seasons at Princeton.

“Because the scouts had spent enough time talking to him, they needed to see him physically,” said Surace.

“They needed to see him run and jump and do football drills and he thought April 8 was the most ideal time. Maybe he wasn’t fully ready but he had been preparing for three months and that is as ready as he was going to be.”

With his stellar performance that day, DeValve proved conclusively that he is physically ready for the rigors of the NFL.

“It showed he was healthy and for him to vertical jump 40 was great,” said Surace, who had to twist DeValve’s arm to get him to switch to receiver from quarterback at the beginning of his Princeton career.

“It was snowing that day and he ran that 40 shirtless. They realized he is fully healthy; that eased a lot of concerns. In the last four years since they have measured this, he is the most athletic when they take all of the numbers and put them into a computer.”

That athleticism will come in handy as he gets on the field for the Browns to work with Jackson and tight ends coach Seamon.

“It is going to be a high energy program and I think Seth will fit in to all of these things,” said Surace.

“Being a young player, they are going to be looking to development is something that as huge, which will help him.”

Surace believes that DeValve’s versatility could help him develop into a force in the NFL.

“You can put him in the backfield, you can spread him out and you can put him inside,” said Surace, likening DeValve’s skills to former Washington Pro Bowl tight end Chris Cooley.

“He is one of those high athletic tight ends who is going to stick his nose in there. He will have to get a lot bigger in the lower body to block every play against the guys he will have to block. I think he can do it in bits and pieces. He is going to create mismatches, that is what the athletic tight ends do.”

DeValve, for his part, is ready to do his best for the Browns. “I am a guy who is very rarely outworked,” said DeValve.

“I work very hard, I go full speed. I am always in very good shape. Everybody is supposed to know the playbook; everybody is supposed to be able to run the routes correctly and catch the ball but not everybody will do it at the same tempo. That is the way I play and that is how I plan to be in Cleveland.”