photo by: Courtesy of Hayden Hatcher

Former Kansas defensive end Hayden Hatcher, left, gets some makeup put on as he prepares to act in State Farm's "Bundle-Rooski" commercial.

If you missed Hayden Hatcher’s appearance in a national commercial, that’s OK. It took him by surprise, too.

The former Kansas defensive end was watching the Kansas City Chiefs play on Monday Night Football on Oct. 7 with his little brother and a friend. Suddenly, during an ad break he spotted himself — with Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes and coach Andy Reid in a State Farm ad.

“Had to rewind it,” he said, “because if you blink, you miss it.”

To be clear, it wasn’t a surprise to Hatcher that he was in a commercial in the first place. By that point, he was a veteran background actor, even if this time around he had earned a slightly larger part.

“Last year they kind of told us a little bit (when the ad would air),” he said. “But this year I really had no clue. My mom was watching more football than she normally does just to see a State Farm commercial, which I thought was funny.”

The previous year, Nadia Jackson, KU’s director of internal operations, had reached out to some of the KU football team about auditioning with a Kansas City-area casting agency that was looking for extras that, well, looked like football players.

Hatcher and current Jayhawk Jereme Robinson, among others, auditioned and got background parts. In the “Mahomes and MaAuto” ad with Mahomes and tight end Travis Kelce from last year, Hatcher said, “You can barely see the back of our heads.” Then there was a second ad with Mahomes and the spokesperson Jake from State Farm, played by actor Kevin Miles, and players “going crazy in the locker room.”

If you do well enough as an extra, Hatcher said, you typically get more chances. (Robinson is also in a newer ad this season with Detroit Lions defensive end Aidan Hutchinson as one of a group of players doing ballet, in which Hatcher said of Robinson, “He did a superb job with the facial expressions.”)

“They hit me up again this year and this year I decided I wanted to audition for an actual part,” Hatcher said. “I got a callback, and then I ended up getting the part.”

The part is admittedly rather insubstantial. Hatcher is visible in the foreground sitting next to Mahomes and Miles for the first full second of a 30-second ad that soon devolves into the three-time Super Bowl-winning coach Reid saying the word (phrase?) “bundle-rooski” in increasingly unhinged ways.

The experience of being on set was far more substantial.

“I honestly felt kind of like a diva for a little bit,” Hatcher said. He got checked in when he arrived, there was a room set up for him and his fellow actors, and there was an assistant to help out with his hair and makeup.

“Geez, this is the first time I’ve had makeup on,” he remembered thinking. “Whatever product you’re putting in my hair, I need some of that.”

The small size of Hatcher’s part, and that of the fellow briefly visible football player Isreal Watson, wasn’t for Reid’s lack of trying. Hatcher said Reid actually asked, “You’re sure you don’t want these guys to get a few lines in?”

It was a nine-hour day of shooting, and Hatcher was still able to get plenty of talking done when the cameras weren’t rolling.

“Jake from State Farm is a bro,” he said. “He’s a really down-to-earth dude. You just see him on TV and you think that’s it. You can talk to him like a normal dude. And same with Mahomes.”

Hatcher and Mahomes, a former Texas Tech standout long before his record-setting NFL performances, got the chance to chat about the Big 12 Conference.

“He took the time to talk to anybody that wanted to come up and talk to him,” he said.

Hatcher’s conversation with Reid might have had the highest stakes, because Hatcher is in fact still trying to pursue a professional football career. He said he wished he had brought a VHS tape of his highlights.

“I went up and told him, ‘I got to try and sell you on something real quick,'” he said.

A high-motor contributor on defense who played end for the Jayhawks, Hatcher tallied 29 tackles in 2023. He’s trying to become a professional linebacker, a new position where he feels he can make great use of his speed after testing well at the Big 12 Pro Day in March.

But pro teams were put off by an injury to Hatcher’s shoulder.

“Once they found out about my shoulder,” he said, “they were like, ‘Yeah man, on paper that looks like a pretty bad injury. You need to get your surgery and come back again.'”

Hatcher is angling for a spot in the United Football League, the same spring league that drafted his former teammate Jason Bean (currently with the NFL’s Indianapolis Colts) No. 1 overall. He said there were UFL scouts at the Big 12 Pro Day, and Hatcher also went to a Houston-area showcase event, where he met Houston Roughnecks coach Wade Phillips, who already knew who he was. As a Dallas Cowboys fan, Hatcher said, “That was pretty cool.”

“The big part is, if I can just get healthy, I’ve shown that I can test well and everything like that,” he said. “I just need to get some film at linebacker. I think it’ll really help my case.”

If and when football draws to a close, Hatcher’s started to make some connections and build some confidence in an industry that was previously totally foreign to him growing up in Council Bluffs, Iowa. He even had a tryout and got asked to do a callback with World Wrestling Entertainment, he said.

Football is Hatcher’s dream, he said, but “once that door closes, I definitely want to pursue something in the field of acting.”

photo by: Chance Parker/Journal-World photo

Kansas defensive end Hayden Hatcher during practice on Monday, Aug. 14, 2023 at David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium.

photo by: AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez

Hayden Hatcher, of Kansas, participates in drills during the Big 12 NCAA college NFL football pro day, Saturday, March 30, 2024, in Frisco, Texas.