Tacario “Bobo,” Davis, the Bengals' rookie cornerback who got his nickname as a naughty little kid, has been very good in the grown-up world of training camp.

A year ago, June exactly, is when his secondary coach at two schools, John Richardson, knew Davis was ready for such a moment.

This was a few weeks before Davis, transferring from Arizona to Washington, would start his last college camp. Richardson hadn't talked to him in a bit, and suddenly, at about 10:30 p.m., and straight out of the north to nowhere, his phone buzzed with a text from Davis.

Richardson blinked twice. No words. There was nothing but a photo of the Jim Thorpe trophy that goes to the country's best defensive back.

"That's when I knew he was ready," Richardson says. "He said he wanted to be the best DB in college football … When I say he's in competition with himself, he's in competition with himself. He knows that there's other people out there, but he's just trying to get better every single day."

On Sunday, after doing due rookie diligence and carrying vet cornerback DJ Turner II’s helmet into the locker room following practice, Davis confirmed the tardy but timely text.

"I'm not in the game just to be average," Davis said. "I don't want to be normal. Average. I want to be a great player, an elite player. Elite players get the Thorpe Award."

Davis didn't make the watch list, released a month after his text. But it didn't matter. He hurt his rib, later his hamstring, and played only seven games. That didn't deter the Bengals from being taken with his 6-4 length that went a long way in their decision to take him in the third round.

And the selection is turning out to make plays daily.  He has ever since he arrived.

"All I can control is having that mindset," Davis said. "Attack rehab, cheering on my teammates, and bringing a positive spirit."

That's not how he became, "Bobo." The way he tells it, he started growing up in Long Beach, Calif., with his mother and grandmother, "just being a bad little kid."

"Doing bad stuff. Putting toys in the toilet. Chased my older sisters around. I had a neighbor downstairs, and I threw water on his head."

The women got him on the right path, and an old cornerback who had a cup of coffee in the NFL and CFL helped keep him on it. At the end of Davis' freshman year at Millikan High School playing receiver at 6-2, head coach Romeo Pellum pulled him aside.

"Bobo, man, you can go a long way to make a lot of money if you just listen and play corner," Pellum recalls. "His long arms, his frame, and just his athletic ability. He didn't necessarily have the ball skills to be a natural ball catcher to play receiver, and there's a million receivers. There's not a lot of DBs, right?"

Pellum, a Long Beach kid himself, knows the answer because his uncle gave him the same talk. Don Pellum, then the long-time linebackers coach at Oregon, told his 5-9, 179-pound nephew, "You can go make your money at DB. Everybody plays receiver."

Pellum took the advice and went to Washington State instead of schools like Arizona State looking at him as a receiver. After camps with Carolina (he was a rookie with Luke Kuechly) and Calgary, he came home to help and found a kindred spirit in Davis.

"I grew up on a different side of Long Beach. He grew up closer to Long Beach Poly, the rough area there," Pellum says. "I grew up in the northern part of Long Beach, the tough area on that side.

"He was always a good kid. He was never around any of that stuff. He was just caught in where he lived. He never got in trouble. He stayed away from it. Never that kind. There really weren't any talks about that because he was nowhere near that. He didn't want for anything, but he didn't have anything handed to him."

Davis' mother worked at UCLA's hospital, and his grandmother is retired from working at Memorial Hospital in downtown Long Beach. The word came early.

"One thing my people who raised me taught me: you are who you hang around with," Davis says. "I always surrounded myself by like-minded people. I wasn't afraid to be different. If somebody said, 'Let's skip practice,' you know what? I'm not going to skip  practice. That's what I want to do in the future."

Davis made Pellum one of those surroundings, and it came in handy in the fight for a scholarship at Arizona. The Wildcats didn't even offer an official visit before they relented, and Pellum is pretty sure that same-day trip on the plane was Davis' first flight.

"When I first came in contact with (Pellum), he was very professional," Davis says. "Not just as a coach coaching. He'd been a player once upon a time. That helped me getting ready for college, getting ready for the NFL. That was very important. Kind of, 'Let's go do it.'"

He has done it with those people surrounding him still. Maybe Pellum didn't make it out of his camp in Carolina, but he has talked with Davis enough in this one to be there in the hard and new times. On the weekend Kuechly went into the Hall of Fame, Davis got his first pick of camp.

And, when Davis stopped being bad, but was still called "Bobo," the only thing he could dump on anybody's head was a football. He remembers wanting to be great at the game at an early age. Nobody in the family told him he couldn't.

"I have that chip on my shoulder for the people who made a way when they didn't have to, or I didn't have a way, and they made it possible for me to reach where I am now," Davis says. "I couldn't help with money. I was too young. But they pitched in for Pop Warner. They gave me rides to practice."

Last year at Washington, it wasn't just a text that showed secondary coach John Richardson how right Davis had been raised for the competitive chainsaw of the NFL.

There was this block.

"We put him in against Wisconsin to try and block a punt," Richardson says. "He did that the whole week with no problems. When the time came, he rushed in the A gap and the personal protector ended up hitting him. But he freed up somebody else to block the punt.

"It shows he's willing to do whatever it takes to win a game. Not just about him, but winning the game. He didn't get the glory for that."

But that doesn't mean he doesn't have glory on his mind.

He beamed when asked what he might text Bengals cornerbacks coach Charles Burks out of the blue just before the season opener.

"Whatever they've got for All-Pro," says Bobo Davis, who has only been very good.