AUBURN, Ala. – Five years ago, Ryan Davis was playing quarterback on Friday nights for Lakewood High School in Florida. He still holds the Pinellas County career passing record. On Saturday, he can etch his name in the Auburn record books as a wide receiver. All he needs is two catches, and he will become the school's all-time leader in receptions.
The record is not something Davis envisioned when he first signed with Auburn in 2015 or even thought possible after not catching a single pass for the Tigers his freshman year. But three years, 36 games and 152 receptions later, here we are. He's already passed former legends like Terry Beasley and Frank Sanders, and now the only person left in front of him is Courtney Taylor.
Before practice one day this week, Davis took a minute to reflect on the record and what it would mean to leave his mark in Auburn lore.
"I just think about the time I put in, the help I got to get to this point," Davis said. "I just think about everything I overcame to get to this point, especially transitioning from quarterback to receiver. It's just something that you could never imagine, but something I always dreamed of. For this to finally come true, it's just a blessing. I couldn't do it all by myself."
Ask anybody around the team, and they'll tell you that nobody deserves it more.
That list includes his position coach, Kodi Burns. And if anybody knows the journey that Davis has taken to get to where he is now, it's Burns. Like Davis, Burns was a quarterback in high school. He even started out as a quarterback at Auburn. But prior to his junior season, he made the transition to wide receiver.
Now, as the wide receivers' coach at Auburn, he's seen first-hand the work that Davis has put in and the strides that he's continued to make year after year.
"Ryan's a special player," Burns said. "He's tough. He's what Auburn is all about. And the one thing about it is nobody really gave him anything. He's worked for everything. He's earned everything he's got. I think it's a tribute to the hard work that he's put in to be able to put himself in this position and to ultimately be one of the leaders on offense and on this team."
It would have been easy for Davis to get down or give up after his freshman year. Maybe his future wasn't at wide receiver. But that's not who he is. Instead, it just drove him to work harder.
So he committed himself to learning the position, learning the subtleties and nuances that go along with it. He always had the ability to make people miss, but there's an art to playing wide receiver. As he describes it, it's like "painting a picture" because of all the details and this idea that you're creating something on the field.
If that's the case, then Davis painted a masterpiece last season when he set the Auburn single-season record for receptions. But at the end of the day, it's still a byproduct of hard work.
"Everything I've earned, I always look back to the hard work that I put in," Davis said. "My dad always pushed me since I was a young kid to just work, work all the time. That's just something that stuck with me through my childhood and how I do everything, how I approach everything.
"Everybody works different ways. Everybody trains different ways. But the way I prepare, I put in an extreme amount of work so at the end of the day you have to look yourself in the mirror and say, 'Did you do everything? Did you give yourself every possible chance to be successful?' Then you can go home and sleep at night knowing that you worked harder than the guy next to you or harder than the opponent you're playing against."
Sure, there might be more talented or more physically-gifted players than Davis. But nobody is going to outwork him. It's been the key to his success, and it's the biggest reason why a former high school quarterback is about to become Auburn's all-time receptions leader.
Greg Ostendorf is a Senior Writer for AuburnTigers.com. Follow him on Twitter: Follow @greg_ostendorf
