Remembering the brief time Josh Gordon was a member of the Utah Utes

SALT LAKE CITY — He never even officially suited up. He was just No. 17 on the Utah football roster.

It’s still there online when you scroll down alphabetically on the 2011 roster page. He’s listed at 6-feet-4 and 220 pounds, a junior wide receiver from Houston without a full bio. Just a name, a number, some measurables and a very brief nod to his past and where he came from. Hometown: Houston, Texas. Former school: Baylor.

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Nearly 10 years later, former teammates recall how he never earned his drum and feather on his crimson red helmet that fall, a rite of passage for all new Utah football players who showcased enough to the coaching staff that they belonged.

How many of you know Josh Gordon spent a fall, a winter and part of a spring season in Salt Lake City in the early parts of this decade?

Die-hards do. Because when they would watch that statuesque figure on Sundays, still 6-foot-4, still very much resembling how he was built when he first stepped on Utah’s campus in 2011, they’d think this: “Like, what if that guy played for the Utes?”

You aren’t alone. To this day, former players and coaches still think about the possibilities, too.

“I imagine those other guys told you how good he was?” said former Utah wide receivers coach Aaron Roderick, now an assistant at BYU. “Look, I was at Utah for 12 years, and we had a lot of great players during that time, but Josh Gordon’s the best player I ever saw step foot on that practice field. I think every single player on our team would agree with me.”

That’s the consensus. You get former Utes players and coaches talking about those months when Gordon was in Salt Lake and there is no shortage of memories or stories to recount. When someone that good and that unstoppable is on your scout team, you always think about the what-ifs. And you never forget seeing what an athlete the caliber of Josh Gordon could do every single day.

“He was a freak of nature and probably the best and most gifted athlete I’ve ever seen,” said former Utah wide receiver Kenneth Scott. “He’s a 6-foot-4, 230-something pound guy with a rocking six-pack … his ball skills are out of this world. He’s fast as you know what, he’s elusive, he’s athletic, and you thought he was going to talk trash to you, but you know what? He was just quiet. I was like, ‘What the heck?’”

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The grabs are still mind-blowing all these years later. The ability to dial it up, too. Scott remembers one kickoff drill when the kickoff coverage team was mocking Gordon a bit that fall. To this day, Scott can still see Gordon’s internal response: nodding his head ever so slightly, signaling that maybe he wasn’t all the way dialed in before, but he was alert now. He heard them. On the ensuing kickoff, Gordon, his shirt rolled up above that six-pack, his massive arms flexing tight with the ball eventually in hand, had his retort.

He housed the kick. With ease. Untouched.

“To this day, I still think about that,” Scott said. “Oh my God. That was Flash. For real.”

The guy was so good here that he’s cultivated highlight-package reels in the minds of former Utah players who themselves have lifelong memories as starters. That’s the true measure of an impact. But, as has happened so much of Gordon’s time in this game, his demons forced him elsewhere. It forced him away from Baylor. And it eventually forced him away from Salt Lake City, where he arrived after waiting too late to declare for the 2011 supplemental draft.

Gordon, whose battle with substance abuse over the course of his young adult life has been well-documented in various interviews over the past decade, failed a drug test while at Utah (he returned to Houston and waited for the 2012 NFL Supplemental Draft). He told The Cleveland Plain Dealer so in an interview in 2012. During his days at Baylor, he was also cited and arrested for possession and failing a drug test in Waco. If you follow football, you know Josh Gordon the football player and you’ve read about Josh Gordon, the man. On the field, he’s a No. 1 wideout when clean. Off the field, he’s been arrested, been trying to wrestle with his own reliance on substances and mental health issues, and has entered rehab programs to fight on his own behalf.

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Since entering the league in 2012, Gordon has been suspended five times by the league in eight seasons. When he arrived in Utah nine years ago, Gordon was transparent about his ongoing issues. He told coach Kyle Whittingham, offensive coordinator Norm Chow, Roderick and others. Dino Babers, now Syracuse’s head coach, was Gordon’s position coach at Baylor and reached out to Chow and Whittingham when Gordon was seeking a new start. Babers went to bat for Gordon, telling the Utah staff that his former wide receiver had the ability to turn it around. The right fit was necessary.

But Gordon was in a brawl with himself on a daily basis in an effort to stay clean. He could beat any opposing corner off the line with a combination of power, grace and ease, but he still struggled when he was away from the Utah facility, away from structure, away from the locker room.

“He made no bones about it,” Chow said, “and he told everybody that was him. No question about it, he had the God-given talent. But at the time we got him, he was deep into whatever problems he had. As far as his time at Utah, I don’t think anybody got anything out of him. But you could tell, now, he was a cut above of what everybody else looks like.”

Years later, when the New England Patriots were exploring the idea of adding Gordon, Patriots head coach Bill Belichick called Chow to gauge his perspective. Chow told him that if Gordon was locked in and free of his issues, Belichick and Tom Brady would have a top NFL target on their hands.

“When you’re going through a season, you don’t have a lot of time to worry about next year,” Chow said. “I think he was well-received, a very respectful and well-mannered young man, but he just wasn’t able to perform because of wherever the heck he was with all that stuff.”

Gordon was quiet, to himself, but not standoffish. He didn’t say much, as players and coaches have noted. He chimed in, though, remaining part of the conversation when he saw fit. That’s what former Utah quarterback Adam Schulz remembers from when he was the scout team quarterback in 2011, his freshman season.

“I know some people have looked down on some of the choices that he made, and obviously he’s gone through a lot, but he was a down-to-earth guy,” Schulz said. “I specifically remember and I still laugh about it: One day in the locker room, he walked by when we were just talking and he said, ‘I’m going to need that number next year.’ He pointed at my jersey, No. 12. I was like, ‘Hell, no, you’re not getting it.’ At the time, I had no idea who he was or how good he was or what he was going to be. I just remember I told JG, ‘No.’”

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Number 12 mattered to Gordon. Gordon’s body is covered in tattoos. On his back, surrounded by other pieces of personal art, is a 12 where a football jersey would be.

Instead, he was No. 17 during his time at Utah. And No. 17 would so often just blow by opposing cornerbacks and make them look inconsequential. Every Monday, Roderick said, veteran players would go through light workouts and that would allow the coaching staff time to work with the scout team and those in redshirt mode. A full scrimmage basically took place every Monday. That’s when he got to work with Gordon most.

“It was not fair,” Roderick said. “He was playing against our redshirt guys, walk-on guys. It was fun to watch him play, and it was really fun to coach him, too, because he had already been really well-coached, but he was always open to learning new things. Whether it was a new release move or a different technique, he was a football guy. And he wanted to be a great player and he was very coachable. His problems were just … when he got away from our building, just being able to keep himself together when he was away from the building.”

Former Utah quarterback Jon Hays didn’t throw to Gordon that much that year. He was taking first- and second-team reps with the starter, Jordan Wynn.

“It’s been crazy to watch his career,” Hays said. “It’s crazy to think about that dude being on our scout team.”

It still is to Conroy Black. Utah’s No. 1 cornerback on that 2011 team was one of the original Florida products recruited to play at Utah. Roderick actually recruited him and says that Black’s physical makeup is as good as any corner Utah’s had in the past decade. Roderick still recalls Black’s 100-meter time off the top of his head: 10.3. So as Utah’s No. 1 corner in Whittingham’s man-press style, Black often went up against Gordon in practice. They jousted frequently.

“You know I’m a track guy? His stride, the way he ran, the way his knees got so high, I was like, ‘Man, this is just a real strong dude.’ That’s what made him so explosive. A lot of guys are not that strong and explosive. He was a freak athlete,” Black recalled. “My main thing as a man-cover corner … once I get my hands on you, it’s a wrap. I was long. I had long strides. But for him, he was very physical with his hands at the line. It started with me because he was so physical at the line. I couldn’t do to him what I could do to others. It was tough, man.”

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Black remembers Gordon just like his former teammates, too. A soft-spoken guy who wasn’t boastful at all. It all came so natural to him, so easy that when his spikes were laced up and his helmet was strapped on that, sometimes, coaches maybe thought he was just coasting.

“You know some people who just have this sort of demeanor? Like a humble, nice, quiet personality, they don’t bother anybody, sometimes it seems like they’re not even attached to what’s going on, like they were off in their own world. But he was cool. He was in his own world, but he was just nonchalant,” Black said. “That’s why he would sometimes piss the coaches off because he was so nonchalant. They felt like they couldn’t light a fire under him. But between the whistles, he’s going off. He’s all-world. For us, we always used to say, even in our meeting rooms before practice, ‘This guy is unbelievable.’ We used to literally laugh how he would walk to the line, he would have his head down, he wouldn’t even look at you, he’d have his head down. The second they blow the whistle or say ‘hut,’ he exploded.”

In those full scrimmages, Schulz went through the proper progression of his reads. On one throw, he went to the other side of the field, following the right read, despite Gordon having the inside track against the opposing corner. The pass fell incomplete.

“Norm comes up to me and he said, ‘You see that man? Just throw him the ball. Every time,’” Schulz said, remembering as Chow pointed at Gordon. “From then out it was like four-verts, double coverage, let’s throw the ball to Josh. It is what it is. If that’s what he wants. It was stupid easy just looking at it. It was unreal. People still joke about it.”

Schulz remains close friends with a former Utah graduate assistant from that season. The two often talk about Gordon and that year he was with the Utes. Like Scott and Roderick say, Schulz believes Gordon is “the best athlete to ever walk through the University of Utah.” Schulz and Gordon would stay after practice most days. Schulz would throw around 50 passes in a row as Gordon would stand still.

“I remember NFL scouts were showing up to practice,” Schulz said, “and listen, we had a good defense, but I think they were coming to watch Josh Gordon on the scout team go against those guys.”

With stories like this, typically, there might be some room for hyperbole: an eventual superstar athlete having spent months behind the scenes before bursting onto a stage as bright as the NFL. But several of those who spoke to The Athletic for this story all recalled their own version of the most memorable Josh Gordon at Utah moment. And they recalled it unprompted, which means the heave that Schulz made nine years ago resulted in such a transcendental moment that so many minds reminisce on what happened one day in practice.

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“It was probably a 50-yard throw,” Schulz recalled, “and the fact that the ball was up in the air for that long, and he had a good defender on him, and obviously he’s jumping and he’s going to catch it with one hand? That’s a lot of force to be taken to the hand and catch it with one instead of two. I just remember laughing.”

The corner in coverage was Black.

“The amount of highlight catches he had? I have a friend, to this day, he would always say to me, ‘Josh Gordon caught a bomb on top of my head,’” Black said, laughing. “It was one time that he did a one-handed catch over me. He used to kill other corners all day.”

Hays remembers the circus one-handed grab because it changed the way practice was run with Gordon on the scout team.

“I remember somebody telling me they had to change their practice script on Thursday because you usually finish with situational stuff,” Hays said. “You usually finished with a Hail Mary. I think they were getting kind of frustrated when Adam would just chuck it up and that dude kept going up and getting them.”

When the phrase “one-handed catch” was spoken to Roderick over the phone, the former Utah assistant interrupted.

“I remember the catch he’s talking about, because we all watched it on film in our meetings,” Roderick said. “The defensive guys came in and said, ‘Oh my gosh, you have to come in and see this catch Josh made today.’ I recruited Conroy from Fullerton College. He was a 6-foot corner who ran a 10.3 100-meter from Florida. A freak athlete, as good of an athlete as Utah’s had at corner. Josh’s ball skills were insane. He could catch anything at any angle. He wasn’t just hot-dogging. He could be running full speed and a ball could be behind him and he could just stick one hand out and it would stick like the way you or I would catch a Nerf ball or something.”

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If you didn’t know Josh Gordon spent a year at Utah, now you know. There haven’t been all that many what-ifs in Whittingham’s tenure, but you can bet Gordon is near or atop the list for many former players, coaches and fans. No. 17 on the 2011 roster.

“Every time I hear his name in the media, whether it’s something great he did in a game or something about his troubles, I always question whether or not there’s something better I could’ve done for him,” Roderick said. “I think everybody that had anything to do with him probably feels that way.

“I think any coach that’s worth his salt is always going to … you’re always trying to get better, you’re always asking your players to improve, and coaches are wondering what they can do to get better, too, so there’s a constant questioning of what more could we have done to help him? In the end, I don’t know. Coach Whittingham is the best in the business at providing structure and culture for guys who maybe have had some issues before, whether it’s academic issues or maybe they came from a tough background or whatever. I don’t have the answer, but I think about him all the time.”

(Photo of Josh Gordon as a member of the Cleveland Browns: David Dermer / Diamond Images / Getty Images)

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