As if the orange blanket of 65,871 didn't quite believe it last Sunday at Paycor Stadium, CBS put Bengals wide receiver Mitchell Tinsley's over-the-head-one-handed touchdown catch on an endless replay loop.
Not as many, though, as the 75 times during the monotonous offseasons Tinsley had one arm pinned behind his back while mastering the one-hander as part of the daily diet of 400 footballs shot to him out of the machine by his high school receivers coach.
"When he called me (Monday), I told him 'That's the same way we catch it on the JUGS,'" says Jermaine Saffold. "It was the exact same way. The style and the way he caught it was just like it was coming out of the JUGS machine."
Saffold already believed before Tinsley made the spectacular his first NFL catch in the third year of his grind. So did his Penn State roommate. Sean Clifford, the Cincinnati-bred quarterback who came home on Monday to take a job on the Bengals practice squad, sent his first text to Tinsley.
"Driving in from the airport having a conversation and everyone's raving about how every day Mitch keeps making plays," Clifford says. "It's really cool to see him do this. He's had a rough road. Counted out a lot throughout his career, and now he gets his opportunity."
Now Saffold drives you into Tinsley's garage at his home on the outskirts of Kansas City. That's where they retreated five days a week this offseason, usually in the evening, to catch footballs after a day of conditioning, lifting, and drills.
There's one picture, a framed photo from 60 years ago of Muhammad Ali glowering over the fallen Sonny Liston. The only other items on the wall are smudged NFL logos left from so many balls streaming from the machine. It could be 100 degrees or 30 degrees, Saffold says, and they'd be in there.
And there are Tinsley's three cats scurrying about that Saffold can't stand.
Ali?
"He wanted to the greatest," says Tinsley, who looks up to Kobe and Jordan for the same reason. "That's the mindset. And I like the way he went about his work."
Saffold has always been his corner man.
"We pretty much tie his hand behind his back. We position his body like somebody is holding him. So when he gets in that situation, it's not new to him," Saffold says. "I'll either tell him to put his hand behind his back, or I'll tie a band around, and I'll have like his brother or somebody hold it, and I'll shoot the ball out of the JUGS machine."
None of this surprises Clifford. He's on his home turf as one of that long line of St. Xavier High School's quarterback prodigies, and he always felt at home with Tinsley ever since he invited him to room with him at University Park.
"He'd get in late after me, and I'd ask him where he'd been, and he'd say, 'The facility,'" Clifford says. "It was always the facility. A common occurrence. Whether it was watching tape, catching JUGS, getting recovery, you could see early and often he was a guy you could rely on and count on."
That same quiet, humming reliability of a JUGS machine is what drew Saffold to Tinsley's seemingly improbable project.
A longshot himself from the same Kansas City suburbs, Saffold hooked on with the Browns as an undrafted free agent out of Missouri State in 2012 and hardly had a glass of water, never mind a cup of coffee.
He didn't get a target in a handful of preseason snaps and was gone before final cuts. He bounced around the CFL and indoor ball before going back home and coaching. That's when the smooth senior-to-be at Lee's Summit High School approached him after a couple of offseason tryout camps.
"He caught my eye. He could catch the ball. The routes and speed would come, but he could catch. He had that skill set. One of the other coaches said, forget it, he only plays basketball," says Saffold, who, like Tinsley, ran track in high school, and he saw something.
"After one of the practices, he came up to me and said, 'I know you played in the league. I have aspirations to play college and go to the NFL, and could you work with me?'"
Saffold thought the kid might be putting him on. You don't want to work with me, he told him. It's going to get weird. I'll call you at 4 a.m., sometimes, and you'll have to get up. It's three times a day. Tinsley didn't relent. They exchanged numbers. And, it turns out, fate.
Tinsley is making one-handed catches in the league with a cornerback tied behind his back, and Saffold is training any receiver of local note.
"In the metropolitan Kansas City area. Mitch helped get my name out there," Saffold says. "I just like the kid. Back then, he didn't say much. He just showed up every day and fell in love with the process of training. Now, he's pretty much like a little brother. Really humble. Doesn't talk about himself. Really loves football, and you can't say that about most people."
No college offers were coming with his high school background. Tinsley thought the best way to go was big-time junior college rather than sub-Division I. So what he and Saffold ended up training for the next summer was a shot to make the team as a walk-on at Hutchinson Community College.
"When he called to say he made it," Saffold says, "I told him, 'Well, that's what we trained for.'"
After two years in Kansas, Tinsley moved to Western Kentucky, and Clifford can tell you how the grind paid off there.
"They brought me in when we were kind of looking at him in the portal. I saw his tape," Clifford says. "He was a guy with a lot of talent. I knew I was going to be throwing to him a lot."
The tape was so good, Tinsley not only got an invite from a big-time program such as Penn State, he got an invite to bunk from a big-time quarterback in Clifford.
"A great decision," Clifford says. "We'd be up late messing around or watching tape. The guy was always available to do extra work."
They're back together this week. It's a week Saffold is telling you he really didn't come out of his chair on Sunday. He was back in the garage with Ali floating, the cats roaming, and the JUGS purring.
"I've seen it before," Saffold says.
