When TCU wide receiver Jack Bech hears his name during the 2025 NFL Draft, he’ll have more than just pro football on his mind.
Bech, 22, has found numerous ways over the past four months to honor his late brother, Tiger, a former wide receiver at Princeton. Tiger was among the 14 people killed in the terrorist attack on January 1, when a man drove a pickup truck into a crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. He was 27.
“Whatever team gets me, it’s going to be a two-for-one special. Not only do you get Jack Bech, you get Tiger Bech too,” Jack said in a story with ESPN published April 17. “I have a superpower now. I have another presence about me that just can’t lose.”
Jack honored his late brother in the 2025 Senior Bowl, played on February 1. He caught the game-winning touchdown wearing his brother’s No. 7 jersey. (Jack wore No. 18 at TCU.)
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After he reached the end zone, Jack dropped to his knee and bowed his head as his teammates came over to congratulate him.
“I knew I was about to catch that ball and score that touchdown,” he said after the game. “My brother’s name was written in the clouds above us. Just so many signs. I mean, if you don’t believe God is real, I don’t know how much more you need.”
Jack was named game MVP and every player on the field wore a tiger-striped decal with the No. 7 on it in Tiger’s honor.
Dave LeBlanc, one of his high school coaches at St. Thomas More in Louisiana, saw first-hand the relationship Jack had with his brother. He’s watched from afar as Jack has coped with his brother’s death.
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“Some people could have spun off the rails after you lose your best friend, but it did the total opposite with Jack,” LeBlanc told ESPN. “Jack was going to be in the league with or without Tiger’s passing, but Tiger’s passing kind of propelled him.”
The second-team All-Big 12 selection notices moments that make him think of his brother, like his Senior Bowl touchdown, or after the game, when he gave his postgame interview from podium No. 7.
“I call it a ‘Tiger Wink,’” he told reporters at the NFL combine. “Just coming down from my brother.”
He even has his own Tiger Wink tattooed on him — the words “7 to Heaven” and Roman numerals representing his brother’s birth and death dates.
“They’re only on the left side of my body, because he was my other half,” Jack said.
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