There’s something to be said for athletic gifts. While professional sports is littered with the failed careers of great athletes who thought they could get by on their mere talent alone, there are far more players who knew exactly what they wanted to do but didn’t have the talent to do it well enough, often enough, to remain consistently employed.
Those who have both like Patrick Peterson tend to be the cream that rises to the top, and the future Hall of Fame cornerback has long been regarded as such. Now in his first season with the Pittsburgh Steelers, he recalled how another Steelers great from the past he first met as a junior in high school couldn’t believe he wasn’t already in the NFL.