Ohio State wide receiver Carnell Tate is using the lowest moment of his life to help propel him through the biggest day of his life.
Ohio State wide receiver Carnell Tate went from the top of the world to the bottom of it in just one phone call.
Tate was a budding freshman at The Ohio State University, also known as wide receiver U, and he had his sights set on making it to the NFL and getting his family out of a tough situation back home.
It was July 15, 2023, and Tate had the opportunity to FaceTime his mother, Ashley Griggs, earlier that day. She was going to a class reunion that night. That conversation would turn out to be their last one.
Griggs was murdered in a drive-by shooting that night, and it flipped Tate's life upside down.
Tate, who is quiet and introverted by nature, had a new challenge that he had to overcome: life without his best friend and his mom. When he got the phone call, he sat by himself, locked in his bedroom with his friends outside of it waiting to embrace their friend in his lowest moment.
Tate found himself at a fork in the road. He could let this tragedy define him or propel him. He chose the latter and used the memory of his mother to propel him to become one of the best wide receivers in the entire nation.
Over his final two seasons, sharing the field with at least two other first-round picks at the same time, he still registered 103 catches for 1,608 yards and 13 touchdowns. He notched those numbers while being the second and third options for the Ohio State offense.
Now, as he stares down the NFL Draft on Thursday night, he has the opportunity to be a top-10 pick in this year's draft. He is probably going to be the first wide receiver off the board, but will definitely be one of the first two.
While he didn't put up the best testing numbers in the pre-draft process, his tape speaks for itself. He can do everything that you need to be a wide receiver at the next level.
He is a surgeon with his routes; he catches everything thrown his way, and he is not afraid to stick his nose in and compete. There is one thing that separates him from the rest of the receivers in the draft: his mental toughness.
He grew up in a hard situation, and just as he left it, it tried to pull him back in. He fought to make sure that he used his tragedy for good, and at the next level, he is going to do the same thing.
It's going to be nearly impossible to turn him away because he is going to fight. That's all he has ever done.
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