WORK IN PROGRESS: ROUTE TREE
For those who love competition and snippets
“Roger Zig California Slot Slant Y Go. On Two. On Two. Ready? Break!”
For the million upon millions of viewers who can hear the raspy bark of quarterback Tommy Chandler these words are a cipher. To Corvis Tredwell, the third-round pick out of Iowa State who is in the final year of his rookie contract, these words represent all of the dreams of his youth and every effort of his adult life poured into a single moment.
A single chance.
All his life Corvis has been fast. Faster than every kid on the block, every brother and sister inside his house. On the field, on the street, the parking lot, the moon – any place, any time and every time, Corvis Tredwell was born to run.
His mother, a former Olympian gave him the gift. And more than the gift, he was blessed with a father who understands the discipline it would take to refine that gift into something more than a ‘what might have been.’ Corvis’s father, DeShaun, played sports his whole life. Never an athlete, DeShaun was a man born with all the drive and none of the innate physical greatness required for those who long to play the game until time takes the game from them.
“I loved football,” DeShaun said so long ago, as he and Corvis stood upon the summer sun-drenched practice field. “She just never loved me back.”
Corvis remembered the heat of that moment. Remembered the fifteen wind-sprints and twenty ten-yard bursts that came before those. The in-cuts. The stutter step before the button hook. The sell-out stride before the corner break. Slants and zigs, curl and flat. Heels digging for a stop route that serves as the lockdown corner set-up for the one thing Corvis Tredwell does better than any boy his age - the Go. The strait as an arrow plunge down the field, when a coach tells another coach, without a single word passing between them, “My guy is faster than your guy.”
“She’s gonna love you, son,” the father had said, sunlight glinting off his teeth. Pride in his voice. Corvis, then, hands on hips and stomach pulsing, listened. “And you’re going to love her like no player has before. Now, let’s go to work.”
And it was in that moment, taking the first steps of making himself master of the route tree, that Corvis fell more in love with his father. And fell in love with the game.
In-season and off-season, Corvis through the course of his sophomore year becomes the first player at his high school to record fifteen-hundred yards in a ten-game season. Junior year sees him catch his 50th career touchdown with still three games until playoff time. Corvis, his father always adding passion to the flames of belief, becomes a boy on fire. As a senior, culminating all his skills and dynamic speed, he torches every cornerback and safety. Shattering zone defenses with eyes keen as a coach’s and scorching disrespectful man-on-man coverages played by soon-to-be blue chip defensive backs, Corvis becomes a school legend before he reaches his prime. The in-season belief and the off-season work transform him into a player for all seasons, local and regional and state newspapers go so far as to call him the ‘greatest Iowa athletic prospect since Roger Craig.’ Maybe since Dan Gable.
If destiny were a living, breathing entity it is plain to every scout’s eye that Corvis has it by the throat.