Cooper DeJean and Reed Blankenship discuss prank calls and how they ‘butchered’ an iconic Philly song at the Eagles parade
The two Eagles defensive backs debuted their new “Exciting Mics” podcast on Thursday.
Before Cooper DeJean finally got the call from Howie Roseman that the Eagles would be selecting him in the second round of last year’s draft, he was prank called over 30 times.
In fact, he was getting so many prank calls from all over the country, including from Pennsylvania, when he did finally get the call, DeJean didn’t even pick up.
“The first one I got — the NFL had cameras set up — I get a phone call, and these people were good," DeJean said on his new podcast, Exciting Mics, with fellow “exciting white” Reed Blankenship. “It’s the Green Bay Packers on the clock, and they say, ‘This is so and so from the Green Bay Packers,’ and I start walking over to sit in my seat in front of the camera. They flip the cameras on … I’m sitting down, and then I figure out it’s prank call. I turn and look, and I was like, ‘Never mind. It’s a prank.’
“Sitting there through the rest of the first round getting all the prank calls was really upsetting. Come the second day, I was still getting prank calls, so I ended up not even answering the Eagles call when I got drafted. They called my agent, and luckily, my agent was there.”
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Prank calls became an even larger topic during the 2025 NFL draft after Falcons defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich’s son leaked Shedeur Sanders’ phone number, prank called him, and posted a video of it on social media. Several Philly area athletes, including No. 3 overall pick Abdul Carter, Eagles sixth-round pick Kyle McCord, and reigning national champion Will Howard, were also the victims of draft-day prank calls.
“That’s your moment. I don’t understand why people do it,” DeJean said.
Ultimately, DeJean did get drafted, and won a Super Bowl with the Eagles in his rookie season while making one of the game’s most memorable plays.
He and Blankenship relived their speech from the Super Bowl parade, in which they attempted to rap Meek Mill’s “Dreams and Nightmares,” which was Saquon Barkley’s idea. Blankenship didn’t want to do it alone, so he enlisted DeJean to do it with him, but the music started halfway through the song, and they had to try it a cappella.
It was “completely butchered,” DeJean joked.
But that wasn’t the most embarrassing part of the speech, at least for Blankenship.
“I go up there and, I’m so embarrassed, I said ‘I’m just a boy from ‘Bama,’” Blankenship said. “I’m an idiot. It was the first thing that popped into my head. From the real A! I don’t know why that was the first thing that popped into my head. I’m an idiot.”
Episodes of the new Exciting Mics podcast will drop on Thursdays.
“[It’s] where we will be giving you guys insight and access to anything and everything,” DeJean said of the show.
“And we’re talking Philly sports, Eagles football, golf, music, fashion, cars, NBA, WNBA, pretty much anything going on in the sports world or just in the world in general,” Blankenship added. “There’s kids out there with dreams, you know. We’ve all had dreams before and we just want to use this as an inspiration and use this platform and podcast to show that you can do great things wherever you kind of grew up.”