CATCHING A BREAK
Back from an injury, UCLA redshirt junior tight end Wilson is ready to put best foot forward
He hauled in only one touchdown pass, didn’t make a catch after late September and spent the balance of the season using his sure hands to guide the scooter that let him navigate UCLA’s campus on a broken foot.
Caleb Wilson apparently made the most of every moment.
Pro Football Focus, the analytics site that grades every snap a player takes, rated the tight end as not just the best college player at his position last season, but also the top returning player from any Power Five conference school heading into 2018.
“That’s pretty awesome,” Wilson, a redshirt junior, said after practice Sunday. “I mean, I try not to put too much emphasis on it because I’m on to a new season, but it is something cool. You work hard for a reason and seeing some accolades and seeing some respect on you, it’s awesome.”
Wilson acknowledged that the lofty rating is largely the result of a small sample size. He played in only five games last season, catching 38 passes for 490 yards and the one touchdown, including a school-record 15 catches for 208 yards during
the Bruins’ epic comeback against Texas A&M.
Wilson caught almost every ball thrown his way, becoming an efficiency expert. At 6 feet 5 and 235 pounds, he created matchup issues because he was bigger than defensive backs and more athletic than many linebackers.
The former high school quarterback was fully mastering his new position.
“He started to learn the details of it, the nuances of how to beat coverages, how to block,” said Chris Wilson, Caleb’s father and the defensive line coach for the Philadelphia Eagles.
Wilson was on his way to another nice game against Colorado on the last day of September when a Buffaloes safety rolled onto his right foot while making a tackle in the fourth quarter.
“I’ve been tackled that way 1,000 times,” he said.
There was something different about this one. Wilson hobbled his way through two more plays, realized something was wrong and left the game. He received the diagnosis in the locker room: He had broken bones in his foot. His season was over.
It was the same injury that his father suffered late in his career as a standout linebacker at Oklahoma. He returned for his senior season but never played in the NFL because there was no surgery for the injury at the time, leading to a degenerative foot condition.
“It made me actually feel really sad for him,” Wilson said, “because I’m fortunate enough where we have technology where I’m back and I’m 100% and I’m able to go and he didn’t get that opportunity.”
The younger Wilson couldn’t walk for about two months, necessitating a scooter to get around. The injury was particularly deflating considering his unlikely rise from a onetime USC walk-on to someone who was starring for the Trojans’ biggest rival after switching positions and schools.
But Wilson’s sophomore season wasn’t entirely a lost endeavor after September. He attended the Eagles’ victories in the NFC championship game and the Super Bowl, celebrating with his father on the field.
His teammates kept his spirits up by delivering pizzas and pizookies to him every Thursday. His rehabilitation stretched into the spring, when he mostly watched new coach Chip Kelly’s first set of practices while wearing a yellow, noncontact jersey.
Wilson hyperventilated his way through the first practice of training camp Friday before his offseason conditioning started to take hold.
“He’s a little rusty right now,” quarterback Matt Lynch said, “but you know Caleb and he’s going to get to the best he can and he’s going to be the best tight end in college football, so it’s exciting to see.”
The high-waisted Wilson is still finding ways to get open despite the unusual gait that sometimes makes him appear less fluid than other players.
“If you get from Point A to Point B, I don’t care how you get there . ... We’re just happy that he’s back,” Kelly said.
Wilson said the tight ends are being used in similar fashion as last season with the exception of being split out wide a little more often. The transition to Kelly’s blur offense is one that Wilson said he’s happy to make, however breathless.
“Coach says he wants to fly every day,” Wilson said, “so we’re always on the move, we’re always running from drill to drill. … We’re never walking, we always got our helmet on, we’re always ready to go.”
Wilson, ever humble, doesn’t mention his analytic glory around his teammates, even in jest. He’s too busy working toward giving the stats crunchers a full season’s worth of highlights to analyze.
“I feel like I can be the same guy,” he said, “or better.”