As Kevin now appears to be out of the NFL at age 33 (despite being a 1,000 yard receiver just 4 years ago and his recovery from Cancer that would have made him a media sensation if he wasn't so pale) I thought I would write a bit of an obituary for him.
He had to walk on to play junior college ball. He left the game for two years to serve a mission for his church and had to walk on again.
An NFL player whose abilities have been praised by coach Mike Martz since the day he made him with the 74th pick of the 2003 NFL draft. Martz was smitten after watching Curtis collect a school-record 174 catches for 2,789 yards and 19 touchdowns at Utah State.
"You put the tape on and the first thing you would say was 'wow,' " Martz told St. Louis reporters last January. "It didn't make any difference who he played, he was running by everybody. I'm not sure I've ever seen anybody in college that fast. I really mean that."
Curtis is a physical freak of nature. At 5-foot-11, 185 pounds, he bench pressed 225 pounds 20 times in a workout for NFL scouts (his best is 385). He also posted a vertical leap of 38 inches and a hand-timed 40-yard dash of 4.21.
If that weren't enough, Curtis has brains. Each year the NFL gives a 12-minute, 50-question intelligence test called the Wonderlic to college NFL prospects. Curtis has the highest score of any active player in the NFL -- a 48. Reportedly, only one player in NFL history has scored higher -- Harvard grad Pat McInnally, a receiver/punter for the Cincinnati Bengals who scored a perfect 50 in 1976.
"He deserves to be a starter," Martz said (2005). "He's a good player, and I'm excited to see what he'll do in the future."
In last the 2004/05 playoffs, he blew by the Atlanta Falcons' Deangelo Hall, who produced the fastest time at the 2004 NFL combine, to catch a 57-yard touchdown.
Hall reportedly called him the fastest white guy in the NFL.
"He's the last person you'd pick as an NFL player," says Ken Beazer, who coached at Snow College when Curtis played there. Beazer helped organized a Utah high school event last winter in which Curtis was honored. "He milled around and nobody even knew who he was," says Beazer. "You couldn't tell him apart from the high school kids."
Snow College coaches didn't want Curtis; they wanted his teammate, receiver David Steel. They got Curtis anyway. During the spring of their senior years, Curtis and Steel drove to Ephraim two or three times a week to work out with the Snow team.
"At first it was a novelty that he drove down," says Beazer. "Then it was, hey, this kid is pretty good."
Before the season was half finished, Beazer says, "We knew he was special. His speed jumped out of you and he had great hands. He was going over the top of defensive backs to catch it. His sophomore year he was unbelievable. There were games where we would just shake our heads at what he was doing."
Beazer remembers one game in which Curtis continually outmaneuvered defensive backs. On one play he caught a 10-yard out and put a move on the cornerback "that just corkscrewed the guy into the ground," says Beazer. "He just threw up his hands and walked off the field. I'd never seen that before."
