CHICAGO — Although months and months of work go into preparation for the NFL draft, sometimes decisions that can shape the future of a player and a franchise are required in a matter of seconds.
With less than a minute remaining to make their second-round pick in 2006, the Tennessee Titans had Devin Hester on the phone. They informed him that they planned to select him with the 45th pick, congratulated him and began to make travel arrangements to get him to Nashville.
Suddenly the Titans ended the call, and before their time was up, they had turned in a card with the name of USC running back LenDale White. Hester shed a few tears, but he was back to being himself when the Chicago Bears called 12 picks later and did in fact draft him — launching the career of the greatest returner in NFL history.
White scored 24 touchdowns for the Titans but was out of the league after four seasons. Hester went on to electrify a city, bringing the crowd at Soldier Field into a frenzy every time he prepared for a return and “Crank That (Soulja Boy)” blasted out of the stadium speakers. He became the ultimate special teams weapon.
Now the 39-year-old Hester, in his first year of eligibility, is one of 15 finalists for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The Class of 2022 will be announced Thursday night during the NFL Honors awards show in Inglewood, Calif. (8 p.m., ABC-7). Thirty Hall of Famers made their primary contributions as members of the Bears — the most in the NFL — and Hester is poised to become No. 31.
Former Bears special teams coordinator Dave Toub, now with the Kansas City Chiefs, described himself as the “squeaky wheel” in pre-draft meetings, lobbying hard for players he believed could improve his unit. When evaluating Hester, who left the University of Miami with a year of eligibility remaining, Toub knew he could be a dynamic returner and started banging the table for him.
Hester was an enigma entering the 2006 draft because teams didn’t know if he could fit on defense — he longed to be a cornerback like his mentor, Deion Sanders — or on offense as a wide receiver. Some thought he might be available in the middle rounds simply because he didn’t have a defined position.
The Titans saw Hester’s talent but opted for a short-yardage back in White who had mixed reviews for character. The Bears had conviction in Hester, knowing they could take time figuring out how to deploy him on offense or defense while using him in the return game.
In the 2006 preseason, Hester had four punt returns of 19 yards or more, and his speed, burst and ability to change directions laterally without skipping a beat were on full display. But they were exhibition games against a lot of players who would soon be out of the league.
Then came the season opener in Green Bay. At the start of the fourth quarter, Packers punter Jon Ryan unleashed a 50-yard punt. Hester backpedaled to the 16-yard line to catch it, started left before quickly cutting back right, picked an alley and — boom! — was gone for an 84-yard touchdown.
“We knew we had something special in the preseason,” Toub said. “When he did it in the first game, it was unbelievable. We really knew. It kind of just snowballed for the kid and us at the same time.”
Five weeks later, Hester’s 83-yard punt return was the winning score in the 24-23 victory at Arizona, the final piece of a remarkable second-half rally.
“It was pretty sudden,” said Brendon Ayanbadejo, a special teams ace who spent three seasons with the Bears and was a three-time Pro Bowl selection. “With Coach Toub, our goal was to be the No. 1 special teams unit. Immediately, Devin made an impact and we were like, ‘Man, we’ve got the best weapon here.’ He was so lethal. So special.”
Hester had five return touchdowns as a rookie — plus a 108-yard return of a missed field goal — and six more in 2007 even as teams did everything they could to adjust.
The first strategy was to kick away from him, which occasionally led to kicks out of bounds. Then came squibs and bloops, so Toub had to change the practice routine and work with the ends ahead of Hester on fielding the ball on kickoff returns. The goal was to reach the 50, but anything beyond the 35 was a win.
That’s when Toub’s creative juices got going.
“You got to the point where you were saying, ‘What are they thinking this week?’ ” Toub said. “It was fun, man.”
With teams consistently kicking away from Hester, Toub started deploying two returners deep on kickoff returns and sometimes on punts. That’s how the famous Johnny Knox play was born.
With opponents kicking away from Hester on punts, it allowed the Bears to line him up on one side of the field and then rush from the opposite side, knowing the kick was headed in that direction. That led to a blocked punt against the Packers. The Bears also started scheming to run counters on returns, knowing coverage teams were overpursuing and leaving gaps on the back side.
Hester finished his career with 19 return touchdowns, all but one as a member of the Bears. His 14 punt return scores are the most in NFL history. Add the missed field goal return against the New York Giants on Nov. 12, 2006, and he scored 20 touchdowns on special teams with his team going 14-4 in those games (he had multiple return touchdowns in two games).
He ranks third in all-time punt return yardage with 3,696, behind only Brian Mitchell and Dave Meggett. Hester was a three-time All-Pro and four-time Pro Bowl selection. After his arrival, the Bears led the NFL in average starting field position for five consecutive seasons, a remarkable testament to his ability and the fear he struck in opponents.
There are 354 players in the Hall of Fame, and none was selected on the basis of his return ability. Five specialists have been enshrined: kickers Morten Andersen, George Blanda (also a quarterback), Lou Groza (also an offensive tackle) and Jan Stenerud and punter Ray Guy.
Hester’s credentials to be the first Hall of Fame returner aren’t in question. Only two returners were selected for the NFL 100 All-Time Team — Hester and Billy “White Shoes” Johnson — and Hester’s statistics are superior. Johnson is the only player on the NFL 100 list from 2019 who has been eligible for the Hall of Fame and hasn’t been elected.
It’s almost certainly a matter of when for Hester, not if. What’s unknown is his chance of breaking through in his first year on the ballot. That’s a more difficult path to Canton, Ohio, something only 19 players have done in the last 10 years after Peyton Manning, Calvin Johnson and Charles Woodson made it on the first ballot last year. In 2018, Brian Urlacher, Ray Lewis and Randy Moss were elected in Year 1.
Some players who were considered a slam dunk for the Hall of Fame have had to wait — sometimes a few years, in many cases longer. Quarterback Kurt Warner got in on his third ballot in 2017. Guard Steve Hutchinson, a five-time All-Pro selection, also needed three turns on the ballot before being elected, as did wide receiver Marvin Harrison.
Former Bears defensive end Richard Dent was on the ballot for nine years until he was elected, and Charles Haley, a five-time Super Bowl champion and five-time Pro Bowler with 100 1/2 career sacks, waited 11 years.
Not making it on the first ballot isn’t a sign a player is undeserving but a testament to the backlog of tremendous players who, for one reason or another, have had to bide their time. Hester’s resume will be weighed against offensive and defensive players who played 800, 900 or more snaps per season. Yes, Hester had an impact on every game, but he got only a handful of returns each week, not 60-plus snaps.
Reaching the finalist stage in his first year is the best evidence that his name will be called soon — and perhaps in Year 1 — to be fitted for a gold jacket. The museum in Canton doesn’t fully reflect the game without at least one returner, and Hester should be the first.
“My argument for him is how he changed the game,” Toub said. “They always talk about Hall of Fame guys, how they changed the game. He definitely changed the game. After Devin came into the league, everybody had to have a returner. Everyone wanted a guy like that because that is how we won games. We won games on defense and special teams. We proved you could do that.
“Everybody had to get a returner and then they had to get cover guys. Teams started getting guys for their roster that could run and tackle in space where their job was to cover kicks. Gunners became real important and then the emphasis on the kickers. They had to get better. They had to kick better. They had to get stronger legs so they could kick touchbacks. They had to get a better variety of kicks. There was a whole shift of personnel because you didn’t have big guys running down on kickoffs anymore.”
Former Minnesota Viking Chris Kluwe had 71 punts against the Bears in games Hester played, more than any player. Hester returned three of those punts for touchdowns.
The second one came in Week 6 of the 2007 season. Kluwe got off a booming 54-yard spiral close to the Bears sideline. Backtracking, Hester fielded the kick at his 11-yard line and worked back to the 5.
“My absolute favorite one,” Kluwe said. “I hit just a beautiful punt, 4.8 or 4.9 (seconds) hang time. It was a gorgeous punt. He catches it and I thought, ‘This is going to be fantastic. We’re going to tackle him inside the 10.’ We have six guys surrounding him and he goes right through the middle of them and takes it up the sideline for a touchdown. Just killed my net average.
“The threat of him taking one back for a touchdown or even popping off a big return was so much higher than everyone else. I think I had three different special teams coaches that faced him, and they were all like: ‘We need to kick the ball out of bounds. We’re fine if it goes 30 to 35 yards. We can’t let it get into his hands.’ You’re giving up so much field position when you do that. To give up 10 to 20 yards of field position because that is the best-case scenario … I’ve never seen another guy like that.
“Hester was, in my opinion, the best returner to ever play the game so far.”
There are talented returners who warrant attention every week, but preparing for Hester was on a different level.
“He was so game-changing from the standpoint (of) how you had to prepare for him every week,” said Joe DeCamillis, who is in his fourth decade of coaching special teams in the NFL, now with the Los Angeles Rams. “ ‘Damn, man, we can’t do this, we can’t do this and we can’t do this against him.’
“He totally dominated your thoughts that week you played him, every single day. Everything you did was to make sure he did not hit you for a big return. That’s what the Hall of Fame is all about.”
DeCamillis got the chance to coach Hester near the end of his career when DeCamillis came to the Bears in 2013. From afar, he had been amazed at how Hester was able to create space on his own. So when he played against Hester before coming to the Bears, he instructed his punter to kick short and make Hester catch the ball coming forward, cutting down the distance the punt team had to cover.
“He just was unbelievable when he had any type of chance to back up at the start,” DeCamillis said. “If you hit a 50-yarder and he didn’t have to come up on that ball, you were in trouble. He was going to make you pay. His vision was uncanny when he had the ball in his hands. Great speed.
“When I got there, he was so much fun to work with. He knew that he could make a play if he got the ball in his hands.”
Hester worked at his craft and got better. Part of his legacy that stands out is that he remained dominant for such a long stretch. There have been other elite returners such as Dante Hall and Josh Cribbs, but none had the staying power of Hester.
The day after Hester began his career with the touchdown against the Packers, Sanders said this about his protege: “Devin has to prepare to understand that not everybody is going to keep kicking the ball down the middle of the field.”
That’s exactly what the Indianapolis Colts did to open Super Bowl XLI, though.
“We had decided all week that we were not going to kick the ball to Devin Hester,” Colts coach Tony Dungy told Dan Patrick in 2016. “That night after the meeting, I thought that (not kicking to him) was playing scared. So the next morning as we’re going to the game, I told the team I hope we lose the toss because if we do, we’re going to kick it right down the middle to Hester. We’re going to pound him. Then they know we’ve taken their best threat. They’re going to be finished.
“Thirteen seconds later he was in the end zone. Everybody is looking at me saying, who’s that? I went back and said to them, I told you we’d have a storm.”
A storm. Hester created many of them throughout his career, and that’s why he’s a Hall of Fame finalist in his first year of eligibility.
