Hall of Famer Calvin Johnson’s Advice for Titans’ WR Draftee Carnell Tate

The path to becoming the kind of receiver a hungry franchise can build around starts with brutal self-honesty, Calvin Johnson said on The Rich Eisen Show, offering a roadmap to Carnell Tate after the Tennessee Titans took him fourth overall in the NFL Draft.

Rich asked the Hall of Famer what message he would send the first wide receiver off the board, a young player walking into a city desperate for wins much like Johnson once did in Detroit. Johnson did not lead with talent or scheme. He led with the work.

"Find a pro that you think is doing it the right way, putting the work in," Johnson said. "And just find a way to endear yourself to the fans. And the way to do that is by working your tail off."

The core of the advice was a self-audit. Johnson described the discipline of breaking down his own game into a list of strengths and weaknesses and treating that list as a daily training program, with the heaviest emphasis on the things he was worst at.

"My footwork needs to get better. So every day I would go out before practice and I would put an emphasis in the footwork drills in practice or in just drill work that we did," Johnson said. "I would do the top of my routes in my drill work. I would find a way to incorporate those things so that I'm constantly working on and constantly getting better."

He extended the framework to the small mechanical things that often separate a first-round pick from a star. Hands, in particular, came up as a place where reps and intention compound.

"I work on seeing the ball to my hands a little bit longer when I catch the ball just to make sure I see it. See it into the tuck," Johnson said. "And just working on those little things over time, all those attributes will start to level up."

The second half of the recipe is more familiar but no less load-bearing. Johnson told Rich that the receiver's ceiling is tied to the arm throwing him the football, and pointed at his own career as the proof.

"Get yourself an all-world quarterback," he said, before nodding at the Titans' rookie passer Cam Ward as a possible match for Tate. "Cam Ward seems like he can be that guy potentially in the future. I had Matt Stafford."

The message to Tate, then, was the message Johnson once gave himself in Detroit. Make the list. Work the list. Endear yourself to the fans through the work, not the highlights. And hope the quarterback grows up alongside you.