LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — Tre Richardson says he can go from zero to 100 in three yards.
Cornerbacks generally prefer more notice.
But the news here isn't how fast he can get there. It's that getting there doesn't hurt anymore.
He played hurt at Vanderbilt last season. He arrived at Louisville hurt. The Cardinals took one look under the hood and discovered the repair job was a little more extensive than advertised.
So, after foot surgery, Richardson spent spring practice doing what no wide receiver has ever enjoyed doing. Watching other people run.
By May, the doctors said he was ready. The trainers said he was ready. The foot presumably had no comment.
Richardson wasn't so sure. The first few times he planted and cut, he waited for the pain. Nothing. He tried it again. Still nothing.
"OK," Richardson remembers thinking, with a smile. "We're back."
Those are welcome words around the Louisville football complex, where Jeff Brohm has spent much of the offseason collecting receivers the way some people collect power tools. You can never have too many, and sooner or later you find a use for all of them.
Richardson is the particularly interesting one.
He caught 46 passes for 806 yards and seven touchdowns at Vanderbilt last season despite playing with a bad wheel. Against Auburn and Kentucky late in the year, he caught nine passes for 283 yards and four touchdowns.
This raises the obvious question: What does he do with two good feet? Louisville is eager to find out.
"I feel great. I feel way better than before," Richardson said. "No ankle pain. Able to run full speed now."
Full speed with Richardson is not a figure of speech. Asked what he brings that other receivers may not, his answer was a headline.
"Speed," he said. "And I can go from zero to 100 in about three yards."
There are automobiles that would like his training program.
Deion Branch, Louisville's receivers coach, calls Richardson "super explosive."
"The kid can get down the field," he said. "You know, from A to B."
Branch knows something about this. He was a Super Bowl MVP who spent 11 seasons in the NFL catching passes from people like Tom Brady. Richardson had no memories of watching him play.
This is one of the occupational hazards of getting older. Eventually you wind up coaching people for whom your career exists only on YouTube.
Richardson looked him up. His review was not overly reverential.
"It's cool," Richardson said. "I feel like my tape up there, but yeah, he got some good tape."
Branch has two Super Bowl rings. Richardson has confidence. Everybody brings something to the room. What Branch wants to give Richardson now is something Vanderbilt didn't ask him to show very often: a complete route tree.
Richardson said he ran mostly go routes and posts last season. At Louisville, he's learning digs and slants and how to get in and out of cuts more efficiently. Brohm plans to move him inside and outside and use him in the return game. Who knows, he could line up in the backfield here and there.
In technical football terminology, Louisville plans to put him wherever the other team wishes he weren't.
Richardson mentioned Rondale Moore when asked for his comp in Brohm's offense. Moore caught 114 passes as a freshman for Brohm at Purdue and became one of those players defensive coordinators spent all week locating and Saturday afternoon losing.
Branch, however, didn't chase the comparison. Partly because he doesn't think Louisville should need Richardson to carry that kind of load.
"I think here we really don't have to focus on it," Branch said. "He doesn't have to really be Rondale, per se, as far as take the boatload of the offense because he has two, three other guys around him."
In fact, Branch went considerably further.
"I feel like this would be Coach Brohm's best receiving unit that he's had," Branch said.
That's saying something for a coach who has spent a career manufacturing passing yards.
Branch sees four or five receivers capable of becoming major parts of the offense. That creates a pleasant problem for Brohm. It could create an unpleasant one for everybody else.
Louisville has running backs who can score from anywhere. It has tight ends it wants to feature. It has multiple receivers Branch trusts. And it has a quarterback in Lincoln Kienholz whom Brohm believes has the arm to attack the field vertically.
Now it has Richardson healthy enough to run under those throws.
It took him a while to get here.
A four-sport athlete in Topeka, Kansas — state champion in the 100 meters and long jump, nearly 2,000 rushing yards as a senior — college football barely noticed him.
So he went to Hutchinson Community College, where he became an All-American return specialist. Then Washburn, where he became an all-conference receiver. Then Vanderbilt, where he became the Commodores' leading receiver. Along the way, he became a father at 19, and much of that path was shaped by staying present in his son's life, including a court battle for joint custody.
He came to Louisville because there's only one level left.
"Brohm has a great chance to throw receiver ones into the league, and that's my goal," Richardson said. "And then where else are you going to get coached by a Super Bowl MVP?"
So Branch will teach him the routes. Brohm will figure out where to put him. Kienholz will try to get him the football.
Richardson's job might be the simplest. For the first time in a while without pain: plant the foot, make the cut and go. Zero to 100 in three yards.
Getting to that runway just took a little longer.
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