Striving For Perfection
Oct. 18, 2001
CORAL GABLES, Fla. – There’s only one way for Miami tight end Jeremy Shockey to fold his clothes, park his car, clean his apartment – or catch a football.
Perfectly.
“I take pride in everything I do,” Shockey says. “I don’t even have to think about doing stuff like that. If you don’t do the little things right, the big things will never come.”
Shockey’s disciplined ways have him headed for a big season with the top-ranked Hurricanes (5-0) and a probable future in the NFL. That’s the sole reason he transferred to Miami last year from a junior college in Oklahoma.
The 6-foot-6 Shockey has a team-high 18 receptions for 259 yards and three touchdowns this season. He has emerged as one of Ken Dorsey’s favorite targets, helping take the pressure off a young and inexperienced wide receiver corps.
The Hurricanes are idle this weekend but play host to West Virginia (2-4) on Thursday night. This much is certain against the Mountaineers: Shockey will be seeking perfection.
“Shockey gets so animated with everything he does,” fullback Najeh Davenport says. “When Shockey messes up he gets mad. When he does good he gets mad. When Dorsey doesn’t throw him the ball he gets mad.”
Shockey always thinks he is open and often calls for the ball – even when the team is still in the huddle. That’s what he did last season just before the game-winning touchdown against Florida State.
On first-and-goal from the 13, and with less than minute remaining, Shockey turned to Dorsey and said: “I’ll be open.”
He was. With double coverage on receivers Santana Moss and Reggie Wayne, Shockey was singled up against a linebacker, a mismatch that usually favors the speedy and sure-handed Shockey.
He caught the slant pass for the touchdown, and he hasn’t stopped hearing about it since, especially in the weeks leading up to last Saturday’s game against Florida State.
“It keeps coming up,” he says. “That’s old news, it was last year. It’s over and done with.”
Maybe so, but he certainly left an impression on the Seminoles. FSU double covered Shockey frequently in Miami’s 49-27 victory last week. Shockey caught only one pass, a 1-yard touchdown reception on fourth-and-goal that gave the Hurricanes a 21-0 lead in the second quarter.
It was his sixth career touchdown in 15 games. Not bad for a late bloomer who wasn’t sure he would end up playing Division I football.
Shockey grew 4 inches during his final two years at Ada High School in Oklahoma, but looked frail as a 6-foot-5, 195-pound senior. He thought he would be playing for the Oklahoma Sooners, but when coach John Blake was fired in 1999, Shockey’s scholarship offer went with him.
As Shockey recalls it, new Sooners coach Bob Stoops “didn’t want me.”
Unhappy with his remaining scholarship offers, Shockey decided to stay close to home and attend Northeastern Oklahoma A&M Junior College. In his only season there, Shockey gained 25 pounds and got Miami’s attention by catching 33 passes for 484 yards and seven touchdowns.
The Sooners wanted Shockey, too. But the feeling wasn’t mutual.
“I had a bad taste in my mouth,” Shockey says. “If they didn’t want me, I didn’t need them.”
Shockey chose Miami without even visiting the campus.
“I knew I had a chance to play right off, and the University of Miami always sends people to the NFL,” Shockey says. “That’s the ultimate goal of mine. I knew I had a chance. I knew I would fit in well with the scheme, I liked the coaches, all the staff and the players. I felt good about it, so I just went with it.”
And he brought his work habits with him to south Florida.
Shockey always tries to see how many passes he can catch in a row without dropping one. But he doesn’t count by the practice, the day or the week. He counts consecutive catches by the month. He once went more than two months without dropping a pass.
“When I dropped one, I almost bit my tongue off I was so mad,” he says.
When coaches told him last season he needed to improve his blocking, that was the only part of his game he worked on – for three months.
“Tight end is a position that’s dying out,” he says. “There’s not too many complete tight ends in the nation. There’s a lot of tight ends that can just catch and there’s a lot of tight ends that can just block, but there’s not very many that can put them both together.”
When Shockey’s junior college team lost to Blinn (Texas) College in 1999, a game Shockey felt his team should have won, it bothered him so much that he picked up a handful of dirt and shoved it into his mouth. He wanted to forever remember the taste of defeat.
“That’s what makes Shockey, Shockey,” offensive tackle Joaquin Gonzalez says. “He hates to lose more than anybody.”
He hates anything outside of perfection.
By MARK LONG
AP Sports Writer
