Vikings' Keenan McCardell applies lessons from training camps past to his young receivers

Keenan McCardell has been fined 15 times in his three seasons as Vikings receivers coach.

"They fine me when I show any videos," McCardell said of the young men he coaches and gets teased by for "living back in the day" via instructional videos featuring the likes of Jerry Rice, Randy Moss and, yes, a certain former 17-year, rags-to-riches NFL veteran named Keenan McCardell.

"How much they fine you?" McCardell was asked as he visited with Cardinals radio analyst and back-in-the-day Browns teammate Ron Wolfley before Thursday's joint practice at TCO Performance Center.

"One dollar," McCardell said. "Per video! I can't afford that. I'm on a coach's salary now."

"How many of those clips are of you?" McCardell was asked by a reporter who is back-in-the-day old enough to have spent the summer of 1992 in Berea, Ohio, covering Wolfley and a scrawny 22-year-old kid who wore No. 2, jumped like a deer and caught everything in his ZIP code.

"Nine of them," McCardell said. "I show them some of my true one-on-ones in San Diego. I show them a rocker-step touchdown against Indianapolis when I was in Tampa. I show them a cutup of when I was in Jacksonville. I can kind of go down the line and tell you all of them if you want me to."

Please do.

Laughter ensued until the impatient reporter inadvertently interrupted, saying, "Wait, no tape of you from training camp 1992?"

"Yeah," Wolfley added. "You were the talk of camp that year."

"Ooh, you're right," McCardell said. "I got to get some tape from that summer. I was 6-1, 175 pounds. I was young. I can show the guys I wasn't always a fat dude like I am now. I was a super-skinny dude that was super hungry and had to find his way that year. And I wore No. 2. I tell the guys I wore single digit when it wasn't the cool thing to do."

Washington's Joe Gibbs picked McCardell 326th overall in a 12-round, 334-player draft in 1991. McCardell spent that Super Bowl-winning season on injured reserve and was, um, "awarded" his free agency the following spring.

Talk about back in the day. The NFL's first modern foray into freedom for the players came from 1989 to '92, when the bottom 10 players on each roster were left unprotected and therefore free agents.

"Yeah, I was a 'Plan B' free agent in '92," said McCardell, whose signing bonus was $30,000.

"Me, too," said Wolfley, an ornery fullback and wild-eyed four-time special teams Pro Bowl player let go by the Cardinals and gladly gobbled up by second-year Browns coach Bill Belichick.

"We're old school, baby," McCardell said.

McCardell tried to humble himself when Wolfley asked about the new-schoolers he now coaches.

"Well, I got a pretty good one over there," said McCardell, nodding toward unanimous first-team All-Pro Justin Jefferson. "I teach him a little something and then get out the way."

"Please," Wolfley said. "Seventeen years you played? Seventeen years you stayed in NFL shape? You must be teaching all of them a lot of life lessons."

"Always," McCardell said. "I tell them, brother, I'm a guy who's been drafted in a round that doesn't exist no more, been the guy they've let go, brought back, let go. Been the No. 3 guy, No. 2 guy, No. 1 guy."

McCardell was injured at the end of that 1992 training camp and played only two games, catching one ball that year. Belichick cut him three times in a 10-week period, kept him to start the 1993 season, cut him in Week 3 and re-signed him later after McCardell had spent two weeks on the Bears' practice squad.

"The rest is history," McCardell said.

In four seasons in Cleveland, McCardell caught only 80 passes for 1,133 yards and eight touchdowns. Over the next 12 years, he caught 803 passes for 10,240 yards and 55 touchdowns before retiring at 37.

Asked if he sees hints of himself in any of the Vikings players he coaches now, McCardell singled out Jalen Nailor and undrafted rookie Thayer Thomas.

"I talk with Thayer a lot about, 'You got the cards stacked against you, young man. But you can flip them in your favor. Grab them and flip them cards your way.'

"I tell all of them my story. I tell them I never gave up. It's all persistence. If you want to be something, be someone, be on this team, you got to be persistently good. Persistently good every day. You got to be persistent about being persistent. Do your job."

"Man," Wolfley said with an approving smile. "You sound just like Belichick."