Right to the end, Gaines Adams was ahead of his time

TWO IMAGES RUSH forward at the mention of Gaines Adams, each of them viable snapshots of a country kid with accelerated athletic ability in his body and a rare sense of calm in his personality.

The first memory is obvious. The 66-yard fumble return on a field goal attempt by Wake Forest in 2006 would have been the signature play for any defensive lineman's collegiate career. Adams streaked into the play, swiped the ball and outran everybody for a touchdown that was the big play in the 27-17 win and the big play for the season, as it turned out.

The second image came a year later in his rookie season with Tampa Bay after the Buccaneers were so impressed with his burst of speed off the line that they used their No. 4 pick in the draft to take Adams. Later that season, he played against the Panthers in Charlotte and was used almost exclusively in passing situations as a speed rusher off the edge.

He was a handful to keep up with, but his relative light frame - he was 6-foot-5, 260 when he got to Tampa - meant that he couldn't stand up to the game-long abuse he would see on the defensive line. After that game, he saw a familiar face of a reporter he remembered from Clemson in the Buccaneers' locker room. Adams broke into a large grin, offered a hand and was having an amicable chat when he was asked about the transition to the NFL.

The smile disappeared and a serious expression came over him.

"It's a lot different than college," he said. "I had some moves that worked (at Clemson), but they've seen them all here; I have to work on some new things."

You see, Gaines Adams didn't want to just collect a fat paycheck and be on the team, he wanted to do what he had always done. He wanted, and probably expected, to excel.

He was always ahead of his time in that regard, right up until he got to the NFL and needed to adjust. It wasn't that he couldn't play - far from it. He was as quick off the snap as anybody in the league, which gave him the advantage of lining up wider than most defensive ends.

When he took off, the tackle had to be moving fast to his left, shuffling his feet to try to cut off the angle and get in Adams' path. Even without the strength to take on a 325-pound tackle with a bull-rush move right at the guy, Adams' great speed was an equalizer because by the time the tackle could get to the spot, he was seldom in a balanced position to battle Adams. In his rookie season, it came down to that hand-to-hand combat and whether Adams could bump a bigger man off balance enough to get to the quarterback.

A coaching change sent him to Chicago midway through the recently concluded season, which may have been the best place for him. Bears coach Lovie Smith won his coaching accolades with the Cover 2 defense, which requires two things above all else - an athletic middle linebacker who could drop into pass coverage and a fast pass rusher like Adams.

Brian Urlacher, who missed most of 2009 with a broken wrist, was the linebacker and Adams was going to be the pass rusher.

We'll never got to see how it would have finished. Adams died Sunday morning in Greenwood at age 26 after going into cardiac arrest.

But from the time he was just a big kid learning to play 8-man football in high school, to a Clemson recruit, to an All-American and a first round draft choice, this was a guy who was, more often than not, ahead of his time.

When he needed to learn and prove himself, he passed the test every time. It would have been the same with Bears in 2010, we all know that.

Everyone who ever knew Gaines Adams knew that.