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From Jeff Howe, TheAthletic
Tre Nixon was stuck on his brown leather couch in front of an oval-shaped coffee table that was covered in food and empty water bottles, the remnants of a stressful afternoon.
At various points, he became fixated on a whiteboard with NFL teams that needed wide receivers, hoping one of them viewed him as their solution. The sixth round was especially torturous, as there was a run on eight more wideouts.
Time froze with each selection. Yet, the day was also escaping in a moment that had become all too fleeting.
His mother’s living room in Viera, Fla. – filled with nine people glued to the TV – was numb.
Nixon had just completed a successful tenure at the University of Central Florida, although he missed six games as a senior due to a broken collarbone. The injury was the root of his draft-weekend slide.
“There is no way he would have gotten past the third or fourth round,” said UCF wide receivers coach Darrell Wyatt, who has coached the position for more than three decades. “I’ve (coached) six receivers drafted in the third round or higher. There is no way he would have gotten past the third round.”
Nixon was getting calls from teams that expressed interest in signing him as an undrafted free agent. As that scenario became a more realistic possibility, Nixon told people he had his heart set on signing with the
New England Patriots.
Then, after 32 receivers had been drafted, Nixon got a call from an unknown Massachusetts number.
It was Ernie Adams.
The Patriots were selecting Nixon with the 242nd pick.
The living room exploded. Neighbors surrounded the house, poured into the backyard and cheered.
Meanwhile in Foxboro, Bill Belichick was honoring Adams’ career as the Patriots’ longtime director of football research. As part of an informal ceremony in the draft room, Belichick had also put Adams in charge of selection No. 242.
“Tre told me that makes him even more motivated to know a guy with so much football history, that Tre was his last pick,” said Kevin Mays, who was Nixon’s coach at Viera High and was in the room when he was drafted. “He wants to make (Adams) proud.”
So just how did Adams come to covet Nixon?
The lightning-fast receiver didn’t exactly emerge out of nowhere. He was once one of the most sought-after recruits in the country and a member of the most physically gifted receiver depth charts in years. Just last fall, Nixon was on track for a monster season before the injury in the opener.
Adams, once a Wall Street investor, might have just bought low on a stock the Patriots hope will explode in the years to come.
‘A humble competitor’
Nixon was in middle school when he moved with his mother and brother to Viera, a newly built suburb 20 minutes from the Atlantic coast and popular among golfers and retirees. It’s the type of town where golf carts occupy more of the residential roads than cars, and the restaurants close down when they turn on the streetlights.
Nixon developed his friendships through youth football, and his core group had decided by the eighth grade that they’d do everything possible to play in college. By his sophomore year at Viera High, he became an offensive staple.
“His life revolved around football,” Mays said. “He was a big part of what we did.”
Nixon’s reputation blew up in the spring of his sophomore year when he ran a laser-timed 4.38-second 40-yard dash at the Nike SPARQ combine in Chicago, one of the most well-known recruiting camps in the nation.
“From that point on,” said lifelong friend Evan Cruz, who played cornerback at Viera High, “the attention (surrounded) him more.”
The national attraction to Nixon was effortless. He caught 145 passes for 2,784 yards and 36 touchdowns in three seasons at Viera, and he was fourth in the voting for Florida’s Mr. Football award as a senior. Nixon had nearly 50 offers, including from perennial powerhouses Alabama and Clemson.
Recruiters saw him do it all. Against Cocoa High, Nixon beat
Chauncey Gardner-Johnson – now with the
New Orleans Saints – for two of his four touchdowns, to the point where they had to pull the star cornerback off the field. In a rivalry game with Rockledge, Nixon set the tone for the blowout victory by returning the opening kickoff for a touchdown.
“That’s the type of player he was,” Cruz said. “When the coaches needed a play, he would be the person to go to. He’s a humble competitor, the guy that has a dog in him, but you don’t really know it yet. You think he’s all nice and stuff until he gets on the field, and he turns on that switch.”
Nixon’s big plays were obvious. So was his passion.
“He took every rep,” said Grant Heard, who was Ole Miss’ wide receivers coach at the time and in charge of Nixon’s recruitment. “If he took a rep and didn’t like it, he got back in line. He was a super competitive kid, and he was the best player on his team. Normally, the best player kind of slacks off, but he was the opposite. He worked his butt off.”
Nixon chose Ole Miss over Penn State and Georgia and was in the same recruiting class as Rebels receivers
A.J. Brown,
DK Metcalf and
Van Jefferson, who all became second-round draft picks.
Nixon wasn’t concerned about the competition for playing time. He wanted it.
“He embraced it,” Heard said. “He was like, ‘If I want to be the best, I want to see what the best looks like. I can learn from them, or I can take their spot.’ He wanted to go compete against the best. It speaks to his character and competitiveness. He wants to compete. That’s all he wants to do.
“The funny thing is Tre is 6 feet, but in my room at that time, he was the shortest guy in the room. He was a midget. So I was going to put him inside and try to get him touches in space and be special, which he could do.”
However, Nixon was never able to get it going. He broke his sternum while taking a hit over the middle in practice before the season and had to redshirt. In 2017, head coach Hugh Freeze had to resign due to a controversy that resulted in a postseason ban, and the new staff didn’t have the same vision with Nixon, who caught one pass for 19 yards that season.
So Nixon transferred to UCF, which was 45 minutes from Viera and set to institute a pass-heavy offense under new coach Josh Heupel.
It was time to recalibrate his trajectory.
‘Tre was a blur’
Darrell Wyatt, the UCF receivers coach, immediately recognized Nixon’s “elite feet and powerful legs” that helped him separate at the line of scrimmage. And even though Ole Miss envisioned Nixon in the slot due to the redwood-sized receivers around him, Wyatt wanted Nixon on the outside to utilize his sideline speed.
Nixon caught 40 passes for 562 yards and four touchdowns in 2018. Then early in 2019, against Stanford cornerback
Paulson Adebo – a Saints third-round pick last month – Nixon caught five balls for 88 yards and a 38-yard touchdown.
“That’s when I knew Tre had a future,” Wyatt said.