In August of 2011, then-Long Beach Poly football coach Raul Lara pointed to a skinny sophomore receiver whose ears stuck out so far they got caught on his helmet as he slid it on, and delivered a bold proclamation: “That kid right there will be one of the best to ever come out of Poly.”
The receiver was at that time anonymous. He’d never played a varsity snap and his name was listed on the roster simply as “John Smith,” which at the time seemed like perhaps simply a placeholder listing.
Six years later, JuJu Smith-Schuster enters the NFL Draft poised to make his high school coach look like a very smart man.