what convinced Thielen he could make it? The answers to both threaded through his path.

Thielen was young for his grade in high school, just 16 years old at the start of his senior season two-a-days. Thielen stood 6 feet and weighed 160 pounds and, coaches estimate, ran the 40-yard dash in 4.9 seconds on a good day.

"I don't really blame any of the [college] coaches for not really looking at him," Herzog said. "He had the skills it took, but he just physically didn't have it. You couldn't predict he was going to get to 6-3, 200 pounds. At the college level, he wasn't going to cut it. He hadn't developed physically."

Thielen, though, possessed natural athletic gifts. As a sharpshooting guard, he set Detroit Lakes High's all-time scoringrecord. He played summer league baseball, just because. He played to about a 5 handicap on the Detroit Lakes state championship golf team, "and he didn't play a lot of golf," Detroit Lakes athletic director Rob Nielsen said. Thielen jokes these days about joining the tour after his football career.

Detroit Lakes used a run-heavy, split-back offense. When they passed, they'd play-action and heave it deep to Thielen, knowing he'd somehow come down with the ball. His coaches gaped at one another and ask, after Thielen had pinned a ball to his leg or snared one behind his back, "Did you see that catch?" Thielen worked for Herzog's family's roofing company in the summer, and Herzog would be amazed how every time he tossed something down to him from