Calvin Ridley is beginning his second season with the Tennessee Titans and he’s by far the team’s most lethal receiving weapon. He’s probably their most lethal offensive weapon period.
The road hasn’t been easy for the 30-year old Ridley, who was the 26th-overall pick of the Atlanta Falcons back in 2018. After a breakout season in 2020 with 90 catches for 1,374 yards and nine touchdowns, they found out he did all of that on a busted foot.
“My foot was messed up,” Ridley said. “But, I’ve always been that guy — ‘Nah, I’m all right, I’m going to play. I’m going to keep playing on it.’”
Shortly after, he had issues with mental health and got into trouble with the NFL for gambling. Ridley was suspended for the entire 2022 season for the infraction (no one will ever say it out loud, but the NFL would prefer you get a DUI than gamble) and has slowly worked his way back to form.
After back-to-back 1,000-yard seasons with the Jacksonville Jaguars and the Titans, Ridley says that the time off actually helped him.
“The suspension gave me time to rest, get physically better, and mentally stronger,” Ridley told ESPN. “After that year, I was ready to come back.”
So, what happened?
“I downloaded the app sitting there not knowing that I was breaking a rule or anything,” Ridley said. “Those were the only two NFL games I bet.”
Football is all Calvin Ridley knows
Ridley has breathed football since he was a child and it doesn’t sound like he’s looking to sell insurance or become a TikTok influencer any time soon.
“Football has been my job since I was a kid,” Ridley continued. “That’s all I ever did, man. I never worked a job.”
He says the time away from football helped him tremendously to refocus and approach the game with a fresh perspective.
“I learned a lot of tools during that process,” Ridley said of those rough years. “I still use those things today when it gets hard. I don’t let myself go too far down. I’ll flush out the bad thoughts, refresh my mind every time I go home. If your mental ain’t good, your confidence isn’t there anymore. That’s what I was trying to tell them.”
Calvin Ridley’s teammates and coaches have noticed his progress
No. 1-overall pick Cam Ward has been super excited to work with Ridley. He noticed right away that he was a different player and even noted that he wasn’t like other wide receivers.
“That boy there: different,” Ward said. “How he moves, everything. Now that I see what a receiver’s supposed to be like, that’s why I’m glad like Elic (Ayomanor), Chim (Dike), (Xavier Restrepo), Bryce (Oliver), all the guys in our room, I’m glad they’ve got him because I ain’t never threw to no receiver like him, that moves like him, can cut like him.
“And that boy he ain’t selfish either. Like he wants the rookies, all of us, he wants us to do better than him because he going to get his one-on-ones.”
Head coach Brian Callahan has been a fan of what Ridley brings to his young team from a work-ethic perspective.
“There’s probably not a guy that practices as hard as [Ridley] on a snap-to-snap basis,” Callahan said Thursday. “He’s really grown in his leadership. I’m actually really proud of Rid and the things that he’s accomplished in that realm over the course of the offseason. He’s deserving of it, he has earned it, and I’m glad his teammates see it the same way.”
If you are going to own any receiver on the Titans in your fantasy league, you can start and stop with Ridley.
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