Amendola finds way back home
There was once a game wide receivers at The Woodlands used to play while killing time before football games.
Retired Highlanders coach Weldon Willig remembers watching his receivers in the locker room. They faced each other a few yards apart and took turns slinging tennis balls that had to be caught one-handed. They kept score, and, as the game went on, the receivers would throw harder and harder until they were hurling fastballs like baseball pitchers.
It’s a game Willig never forgot, one that he’d recall while thinking about a particular scrawny receiver, Danny Amendola, who made one dazzling catch after another in a highlight-reel high school career, an underrated four seasons at Texas Tech, and a 13-year NFL career that has finally brought Amendola back home.
Amendola signed a one-year, $2.5 million contract with the Texans, a deal made official Wednesday
that provides muchneeded depth and continues the career of an established wide receiver whose collection of crazy catches often happened along Kirby Drive.
Were you there at NRG Stadium in 2017? When the two-time Super Bowl champ sealed his second ring in New England’s historic comeback against the Falcons? It was Amendola’s 6-yard touchdown reception that cut Atlanta’s once-25-point lead to a single score, and his 2-point
conversion on an inside screen sent Super Bowl LI into its fateful overtime.
How about the Astrodome in 2001? An undersized sophomore, playing in just his second varsity game, leaped over a defender to snatch a deep pass along the sideline, clicking a foot in bounds to set up a game-winning field goal over Duncanville High School just before time expired.
Hurtling tennis balls. Spiraling footballs. Neither normally escaped Amendola’s trusty hands.
“If he were like some receivers, 6-2 and 220 pounds, he would be illegal,” said Willig, who coached The Woodlands from 1981 until 2003. “But he’s just a little ole skinny kid that plays on heart and always has.”
The little ole skinny kid is now 35, the eldest player on the oldest offense in the NFL. Amendola’s contract with the Lions expired after the 2020 season, and he spent much of the offseason wondering if he’d get an opportunity to continue his career.
Amendola, who lives in Austin, spent the first half of Sam Houston State’s April game against Incarnate Word mulling his options in the bleachers with Mark Schmid, his former offensive coordinator at The Woodlands.
“He wasn’t quite sure if he was going to have a home going forward,” said Schmid, now head coach at Oak Ridge High School. “To find out that he’d signed a deal with the Texans, I was real excited, because it gives him a chance to come back home where he started his football career and hopefully finish it out here at home.”
The homecoming fulfills a few needs for the Texans, a rebuilding franchise that previously only had five wide receivers on its active roster.
Slot receiver Anthony Miller dislocated his right shoulder in the preseason opener, and, although he returned to practice Monday, it remains uncertain just how healthy he’ll be for Sunday’s season opener against the Jaguars at NRG Stadium.
General manager Nick Caserio cut former slot receiver Keke Coutee last week, and, paired with the uncertainty with Miller, who underwent two shoulder surgeries while with the Bears, the situation called for insurance.
Caserio also said Amendola’s personality matches the competitive culture the new Texans regime is attempting to foster in Houston. Caserio, a former Patriots front office executive, watched Amendola amass 2,383 yards and 12 touchdown receptions in five seasons with New England, and Caserio told Sports Radio 610 there were several qualities Amendola “possesses that embodies our program, what we’re about.”
“The overall type of composition of a team is important,” Caserio said. “The type of people that we have in the building is important. And what that hopefully will do is just elevate the performance of everybody around you.”
The acquisition creates a few reunions.
Amendola spent the past two seasons in Detroit playing for wide receivers coach Robert Prince, who’ll be his position coach again in Houston. Amendola totaled 108 catches for 1,280 yards and a touchdown in two seasons with the Lions, and, in 2020, he recorded a career high in 13.1 yards per reception.
Brandin Cooks, the Texans’ top receiver, was also Amendola’s teammate in New England in 2017, when the Patriots reached Super Bowl LII in a 41-33 loss to the Eagles.
“You talk about a guy who’s obviously been playing this game for a long time, the energy that he brings,” Cooks said. “The mentality, the heart that he plays with. Definitely excited to play with him again.”
That’s the reputation Amendola’s always had, Schmid said, a “tough,” “hard-nosed” player who knew he had to maximize his moments on the field.
“He was that way in high school,” Schmid said. “He was that way at Tech. He had to be that way in the league. Everybody that’s ever watched him and knows anything about him knows that’s who Danny Amendola is.”
Nearly two decades have passed since Amendola dazzled Houstonians as a passcatcher and punt returner for The Woodlands, a legend that has grown since his final high school game, the 2003 Class 5A Division I championship in which the Highlanders fell short to North Shore 23-7.
It’s a reconnection that’s important to Amendola, said former Highlanders cornerback Daniel Charbonnet, Amendola’s teammate at Texas Tech.
“It’s going to allow a ton of people who have never been able to see him play live be able to go watch him and experience that,” Charbonnet said. “Which will be a really cool, full-circle deal for him.”
Willig retired from coaching after the 2003 season, and he still tries to attend every Highlanders home game. He’ll be at Warrior Stadium on Friday night, and it’s a moment he’s looking forward to. Recently, the conversations in the stands have been dominated by the pandemic, about friends who have contracted COVID-19.
“Now it’ll be something better,” Willig said. “Danny Amendola is coming back to town.”