The bully’s name was Curtis Parker and, in a strange way, he helped a frightened middle schoolerbecome Tony Gonzalez.
See, before he became the greatest pass-catching tight end in NFL history, Gonzalez was basically an oversized puppy — a tall, lanky kid with floppy feet and no interest in hurting anyone. He played in a youth football league that charged $180 with the guarantee that each player would see the field for six plays. Gonzalez rarely earned a seventh.
“I was terrible,” he told the Kansas City Star in 1997. “I would ride to practice and get halfway there and say, 'I don’t want to go to practice’ and I didn’t go. The coaches would see me riding home in full pads and say, ‘What happened to you yesterday? I saw you riding home?’ And I said, ‘I just went home. I wasn’t playing anyway.’”
That attitude made him easy pickings for bullies, who tormented him throughout middle school. Things came to a head on the day of his junior high graduation, when his family found him hiding from Parker in a remote part of the school.
“The sad look on their faces, that look of disappointment that I would run and be that scared of somebody … I never wanted to see that look on the faces of my parents and my brother and my cousins,” said Gonzalez, who was only playing Pop Warner because his older brother, Chris, did. “That was the last moment you could call me a coward.”
Gonzalez finally confronted Parker, the bully backed down and, as his stepfather Michael Saltzman later told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “After that, he was afraid of nothing.”
As origin stories go, it's a pretty good one. Butit helped that Gonzalez's newfound courage coincided with a growth spurt that turned him into a 6-foot-4 uber-athlete, a two-sport standout gifted enough to share Orange County High School Player of the Year honors with some high school golfer named Tiger Woods.
“I ran into him (Parker) a couple of years later at a dance,” Gonzalez told the Kansas City Star in 1997. “By then, it was my sophom*ore year, he was a junior and I’m looking down on him.
“I should go up to him and thank him one day. Otherwise, I’d probably still be that guy.”
Instead, he became THE guy at his position, rewriting the tight end record book over his 17-year NFL career with the Kansas City Chiefs and the Atlanta Falcons. Gonzalez finished his career tied for first among all players in Pro Bowl selections (14), second in receptions (1,325, behind only Jerry Rice’s 1,549) and first among tight ends in career receiving yards (15,127).
He is one of just nine tight ends in the Pro Football Hall of Fame and was the only one elected in his first year of eligibility.
Bully for him.
“Do I think he’s the best tight end in NFL history? Without question,” said former Chiefs GM Carl Peterson, who drafted Gonzalez in 1997 and spoke to The Canton Repository in the spring. “He did it all and he was so dependable. He missed two games in his career. He was always there and I’m sure there were times he was hurt, but he was always ready to go. When it was game day, he played and played exceptionally well for a long, long time.”
Gonzalez, who declined interviewrequests for this story,was born in Torrance, Calif., and wasraised by his mother, Judy, who worked two jobs to provide for Tony and Chris. Gonzalez’s biological father was not in the picture, but Judy soon married Saltzman — a white, Jewish medical supply representative she met while working at a hospital — and they moved 45 minutes down the coast to Huntington Beach, where Gonzalez took up surfing and skateboarding.
Although timid himself, he grew up rooting for the Los Angeles Raiders, the arch-rival of his future team in Kansas City.
“I liked their aggressiveness, their aura when they stepped on the field like they’re the baddest people in town,” he told the Kansas City Star in 1997.
Once he got to high school, Gonzalez blossomed into a dominant two-way player in football, playing tight end and linebacker. He waseven better in basketball, averaging 26 points a game during the high school season while spending his summers playing against future NBA All-Stars Stephon Marbury, Jerry Stackhouse and Shareef Abdur-Rahim.
By his senior year at Huntington Beach High, he had offers from national power houses such as Notre Dame, Florida State, not to mentionevery school in the Pac-10. All of them were willing to let him play both sports. Gonzalez originally committed to Arizona, then switched to Cal, where he emerged as one of the best overall athletes in the country. He caught 53 passes for 768 yards and five TDs as a junior in football, leading the Golden Bears to the Aloha Bowl. Months later, he helped Cal advance to the Sweet Sixteen in the NCAA Tournament (which was won by Arizona). With NFL scouts buzzing around him, he bypassed his senior year of eligibility to enter the NFL Draft.
“I think he was the first junior that I ever drafted,” Peterson said. "He was a tremendous athlete and an excellent college player at a position of need. ... You could tell he just had a tremendous desire to be the very best at whatever he did.”
The Chiefs were slotted 18th in the 1997 draft and Peterson knew the Cowboys (at No. 25) coveted Gonzalez, so he traded up five spots with the Tennessee Titans, surrendering his first-, third-, fourth- and sixth-round picks in exchange for the Titans’ first- and fourth-rounders.
Tennessee picked Miami DE Kenny Holmes, while the Cowboys settled for LSU TE David LaFleur. Neither made a single Pro Bowl. Gonzalez, meanwhile, became one of four Hall of Famers from the 1997 draft, joining tackles Orlando Pace and Walter Jones and defensive end Jason Taylor. (Buccaneers DB Ronde Barber likely will become the sixth.)
Aftersigning his first professional contract, Gonzalez and his agent, Lee Steinberg, celebrated with a big dinner at Shoney’s, where Gonzalez ordered the chicken-fried steak.
“It was between that or Burger King,” Steinberg told the Kansas City Star. “We had a very glamorous signing night. It was like ‘Lifestyles of the Rich and the Famous.’”
Unfortunately, Gonzalez's first season could have been titled “Struggles of the Rich and the Infamous.” Although he was named to the NFL’s All-Rookie team, he caught just 33 passes and struggled to block NFL defenders. His second season was marginally better. Gonzalez finished with 59 catches but 13 drops, prompting one of the Star’s sports writers to give him a D-minus.
“I’d never gotten a D-minus in anything,” he later told Sports Illustrated. “People were stopping me on the street, calling me at home, asking what was the matter. I didn't have an answer. I'd never worked so hard preparing for a season. I'd put in all these hours in the weight room, out on the field, and I had nothing to show for it. I was confused."
He finally broke through in 1999. Earlier that year, Peterson traded for Warren Moon, who developed a close relationship with Gonzalez and helped him harness his talent.
“He told Warren, ‘You’re a great player and you’re probably going into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. What can I do to be the best tight end in the National Football League?’” Peterson recalled. “And he said, ‘Well, there’s a lot of things you can do, but one thing I’ll do for you is stay after practice and throw 100 balls. We won’t leave the field until we do that.’
“They did that every single practice. Rain or shine.”
The extra work became routine for Gonzalez, who preferred catching errant passes because they better simulated game situations. He also started reading motivational books, overhauled his diet (which is now mostly vegan) and worked on mastering the mental side of the game. By the end of the 1999 season, Gonzalez led all NFL tight ends incatches (76) and yards (849). He made the Pro Bowl, the first of 10 straight, and was named first team All-Pro, the first of six such selections.
"I had to do a lot of soul-searching and find out what kind of person I am, how to be a professional, the way things work in the NFL,” he told Pro Football Weekly in 1999. “Instead of going out there and having fun and relaxing, I was trying to become the perfect NFL player. I have the same skills as I did last year, but mentally I've gotten better. That's the part of this game that most young guys don't understand."
Still, as the statistics and the records piled up — by 2008, he held NFL career records for most receptions, yards and TDs for tight ends — so did his frustrations. The Chiefs made the playoffs just three times between 1997-2008, going 0-3 in those games. Gonzalez briefly flirted with the NBA, playing on the Miami Heat’s summer-league team in 2002, before requesting a trade after the 2008 season. He was shipped to Atlanta for a second-round pick in the spring of 2009, helping the Falcons make the playoffs from 2010-12. Alas, the Falcons went 1-3 in those games, losing in the 2012 conference championship.
Although the 2013 season began with high hopes, the Falcons slumped to 4-12 and Gonzalez retired at age 37. A few days before his final game, he toldSports Illustrated’s Peter King that he had watched “Marty Schottenheimer: A Football Life” on the NFL Network and hated the way his former coach was defined by his postseason defeats, fearing the same would be true of him.
“They really dwelled on Marty never winning a Super Bowl,” he said. “That bothers me, maybe because I haven’t won one. ... There is no way that should define me as a player, and nobody can ever tell me differently. If, down the road, someone says about me, Well, he never won the big one—he never won the Super Bowl, I will say to them, Screw you. Just screw you. You don’t understand the game. You don’t understand me. I will absolutely not allow anyone to let my career be denigrated because of that."
Fortunately for Gonzalez, tight ends are judged differently than coaches and quarterbacks. While February’s Hall of Fame selectors meeting lasted close to eight hours, the voters needed just six minutes and 10 seconds to debate Gonzalez, the second-shortest span of any nominee behind Ed Reed (2:22). As Cleveland-area voter Tony Grossi later said, “Some selectors felt the case of the Chiefs and Falcons tight end up could have been wrapped up in a few sentences.”
Instead, we'll let Peterson do that.
“I’ve drafted a couple guys who are now in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, including Derrick Thomas and Will Shields, and it didn’t surprise me that Tony got in on the first ballot,” Peterson said. “In my opinion, that’s where he should be. I think he’s the best tight end to ever play the game.”
Reach Joe at 330-580-8573 or
joe.scalzo@cantonrep.com
On Twitter: @jscalzoREP
Cover 2 - A Podcast on the Cleveland Browns
