Tee Higgins, the Bengals wide receiver with the Olympian wingspan and modest ways, is playing Tennessee Sunday (1 p.m.-Cincinnati’s Local 12) at Paycor Stadium, and he is thinking about those days he was a finalist for Tennessee's Mr. Basketball and he posted up anything that moved in Oak Ridge.

"Coach Graham. Kwayu Graham," Higgins says.

If you're looking for a reason Higgins heads into the game against his hometown Titans as the hottest receiver in the NFL with two of his three best career games in the last month, Graham is as good as any.

Graham, an Oak Ridge guy himself who likes to call Higgins, "Clark Kent,"  had just come back after a head coaching stint at Lexington High School in Lexington, S.C., where he had been named the Carolina Panthers' 2012 High School Coach of the Year.

He had been asked by his old head coach to come back to Oak Ridge and help get it going again, and now he was coaching receivers when Higgins, a middle school phenom in both sports, approached him just before his freshman year.

"With all due respect, Coach," Higgins began, "I'm not going to play football. I'm going to focus on basketball."

Graham, a year younger than Higgins' mother, Camilla Stewart, grew up with the family in the town of about 30,000 that is a half-hour from Knoxville in eastern Tennessee and had watched from afar as Higgins grew up as an athletic wonder.

"I told him that's fine. I just told him to consider a couple of things," Graham says. "Give football a chance."

He wanted to get across to Higgins that he was a unique player. His size, speed and body control would make him a unicorn in football.

He didn't say all that, but Graham asked him the height of Warriors guard Stephen Curry. Higgins told him 6-3. "How tall are you?" Graham asked. About 6-4, Higgins said.

"I said, 'Well, in basketball, he's a point guard and a shooter, but he's considered small, so you'd be small to average,'" Graham says. " 'And in football, you're big. You've got a skill set no one has, but you do what you feel is best for you. I'm going to support you anyway.'  He was out for football. Thank God."

That's what the Bengals are doing right now. Higgins is on pace for a monster 1,600-yard season, and his 17.3 yards per catch on a variety of Joe Burrow targets is third best in the league.

Last Sunday in Baltimore is a microcosm of his NFL Films buffet.  A 13-yard touchdown on his in-cut that has split and flummoxed two-deep zones all year. A 44-yard over-the-shoulder grab of a Burrow dime. A 43-yard Higgins classic contested catch, coming back to a Burrow scramble and ripping away one of his Game 7 Bill Russell rebounds.

"I'm glad he made the decision," says Bengals wide receivers coach Troy Walters, and he isn't talking about that freshman-year decision but the one Higgins made before last season.

That's when he could have gone anywhere as a No. 1 receiver for more than the four-year, $115 million deal that went down. Ja’Marr Chase gets the media podium on Thursday while Higgins hosts a camera scrum at his locker.

"He and Ja'Marr have such a tight connection that he wanted to stay here, and the Bengals did everything they could to keep him," Walters says. "And I think he also understands the grass is not always greener. Yeah, yeah, you make more money, but are you going to have the production? Are you going to have the quarterback like we have here? He's a fan favorite."

On Thursday, Higgins called it "a no-brainer."

"We've built something special here. I'm already familiar with the offense."

Graham also calls Clark Kent, "the humble lion."

"He's just always been that way. It wasn't about the money for him. He's lived without. So he's blessed. If you talk to him, he'll say he's blessed to be where he's at now. It's never been about that. It was about team one, team camaraderie, and just being somewhere that he likes to be. They were actually his favorite team, the Cincinnati Bengals."

All Bengaldom knows the story of how the young Higgins idolized the basketball-like A.J. Green, but it's an even smaller world than that. When Graham played at East Tennessee State, one of his coaches, Tony Ball, went on to coach Green at Georgia and, long before Higgins played with Green for a year in 2020 in Cincinnati, they talked about them.

"They just were so similar, and I was worried about losing Tee to basketball, and (Ball) told me about A.J.," Graham says. "He said A.J. was the same way. He's a basketball guy, and got into football. Look at him now."

Look at Higgins now. Walters is a Hall-of-Fame artifact himself who played with Randy Moss and Cris Carter in Minnesota, Marvin Harrison and Reggie Wayne in Indianapolis and Larry Fitzgerald and Anquan Boldin in Arizona. Those are receiving tandems either in the Hall or on everyone's ballot.

Higgins and Chase? Chase and Higgins?

"They're up there. But they're still writing their stories," Walters says.

Higgins, for instance, has matured rapidly, Walters says. No longer as moody. More of a steady you-know-what-you're-going-to-get personality. And when you become best friends with Chase, you can't help become more talkative.

His mother, "Lady Stewart," to the family and friends in the community of Oak Valley Baptist Church, believes he has opened up more since the death of his father Eric Higgins a few years back.

"He's got his father's personality," says the engaging Stewart, known simply as  "Lady," to long-time friends like Graham.

Eric Higgins, who had family in Oak Ridge, came from Chicago and brought with him from the north a quiet cool that Graham says he sees in his son.  Graham also sees loyalty. Loyalty to A.J. Green's Bengals. Loyalty to Cincinnati. Loyalty to his mother.

"Always loyal," says Higgins, who chalks it up to being around family.

"Clark Kent," Graham says. "Very quiet. I wouldn't call him meek. He's not a meek person, but he's just very quiet and humble. But when he goes in that phone booth and comes out ….

"I used to think his humility would be a curse and a blessing. He would stay in the back of the line. He would let everybody else do what they do. But when it's time for a breakout, he's ready to break out."

Graham recalls when he took Higgins and Lady on the circuit to camps looking at college prospects. Lady would sit in the stands and fume as Higgins let guys cut in front of him in the line to get more reps, or make sure they went against the top-rated recruits. Anything to be seen.

Graham remembers Lady being so incensed at him once during a break that Tee told her, "Calm down," but when he went back out on the field, Graham noticed he was more assertive.

"He went against one of those top guys from Florida and beat him," Graham says. "When that guy's turn came around again, he said, 'I want Higgins.' So Tee got up there, told him he's going to run a fade, and then went up over him to catch it. Then he tossed the ball back and went to the end of the line."

No longer at the end of the line, Higgins is out in front during the best season of his life.

"Big, fast, hands," Walters says. "Hard to cover."