Former USC Trojan Keary Colbert, shown here as a graduate assistant on the coaching staff, is giving up coaching to make a comeback in the NFL.
USC’s spring camp is only a month away but the Trojans are still searching for a wide receivers coach to replace John Morton, who left to join the staff of the San Francisco 49ers.
One man who won’t get the job? Former USC wide receiver Keary Colbert.
Colbert, 28, spent the 2010 season as a graduate assistant with the tight ends and was reportedly a frontrunner to take over as wide receivers coach, but he announced last week he’s putting his coaching career on hold to try to make it back into the NFL.
Colbert was a captain of the Trojans’ 2003 National Championship Team and once held the school record for career receptions. He was drafted by the Carolina Panthers in the second round of the 2004 draft and set Carolina rookie records for receptions (47), receiving yards (754), and receiving touchdowns (5). Despite his early success in the league, Colbert’s production dropped off in his second year and was quickly followed by a drop-off in playing time. He spent the latter half of 2006 on the bench and the second half of 2007 on the injured reserve before being traded to Denver. He spent the 2008 season bouncing from the Broncos to Seattle to Detroit before ending up in the UFL in 2009, as a Florida Tusker.
Colbert, on the cover of Sporting News after the Trojans won the 2003 National Championship, was a second-round draft pick by the Carolina Panthers in 2004.
In a statement released last week, Colbert said: “After spending a year working with the tight ends at USC as a graduate assistant, it ignited my passion and fire to compete at the highest level. I’ve been training and getting myself physically prepared to make a comeback in the NFL. I plan to be a great veteran addition to any team’s wide receivers corp.”
Another possible inspiration for his comeback? Former USC teammate Mike Williams, who made an astounding comeback with the Seattle Seahawks and former USC coach Pete Carroll after two years out of the NFL.
Williams and Colbert were close on and off the field while at USC, and Colbert not only watched Williams’ success this year, he helped him achieve it.
According to Arash Markazi’s October 2010 story on Williams’ comeback for ESPN Los Angeles, Williams had been training with Colbert before he even told Pete Carroll he planned to give the NFL another try (and when he finally broke the news, even Carroll didn’t believe it would happen).
Mike Williams was recruited out of South Florida by Lane Kiffin and Carroll and became a standout at USC, earning numerous honors and awards. He was picked 10th in the 2005 draft by the Detroit Lions, despite sitting out an entire season because he was ineligible.
While his former teammate Colbert put up solid numbers his rookie year, the biggest number Williams put up was on the scale. Fined repeatedly for his weight and lack of conditioning as a Lion, Williams was eventually traded to the Oakland Raiders and reunited with Kiffin, then the Raiders’ head coach. Williams’ didn’t last long in Oakland before being released and eventually picked up by another former USC coach, Norm Chow, who at the time was the Tennesseee Titans offensive coordinator.
Neither of Williams’ former coaches could motivate him to get in shape and salvage his NFL career, but when Williams made the decision on his own, he turned to Colbert, who trained with him at USC and even accompanied him to Atlanta to work out with trainer Chip Smith of Competitive Edge Sports.
“We coached [at USC] that rule No. 1 is just showing up and he just began showing up in the weight room and started lifting and came back every day. He’s naturally talented as a player so it was just about him coming out and showing that dedication,” Colbert told ESPN.
Williams was able to translate that hard work into a deal with the Seahawks and 65 receptions for 751 yards and 2 TDs in 2010, and even though Colbert supported his teammate every step of the way, he may not have the same outstanding results.
By the time the NFL training camps open – whenever that might be – Colbert will be 29 years old (Williams was 26 when he joined the Seahawks) and will have been out of the league for two full seasons, maybe more. Both were great receivers at USC, but at least when it came to accolades and hype, Williams had the edge. His biggest problem was that by the time he was finally eligible to enter the draft, he wasn’t physically or mentally ready to play football.
Colbert’s rookie numbers suggest that wasn’t the case with him. He was ready to make an impact right out of the gate, but he couldn’t sustain that production, and couldn’t recapture his rookie year momentum over the next four seasons. That might be a bigger problem to overcome, but anyone who says it can’t be done clearly wasn’t paying attention to Mike Williams last season.
Having helped his former teammate through it, Colbert knows perhaps better than almost anyone what he’ll have to do to make it. And who knows, maybe Williams’ success, paired with whatever happens with the NFL and NFLPA, will make some other teams more willing to take a chance on a veteran wide receiver who just wants to play ball.
And just maybe, Keary Colbert’s comeback will be this year’s big success story.
