A coconut and a dream: How Bengals WR Tee Higgins has always brought joy to others
All Kutler Green wanted was a coconut.
The frustrated 4-year-old was in the Bahamas because his father, Aaron, had brought his Oak Ridge (Tenn.) boys basketball team there for a Thanksgiving tournament in 2013. Kutler’s unwavering craving for the sweet, brown, tropical fruit prompted a couple of Aaron’s players to climb up palm trees to bring one down. But the attempts were futile.
And then there was freshman Tee Higgins, who was already around 6-foot-2 then.
To this day, Paige Taylor, Kutler’s mother and Aaron’s wife at the time, doesn’t know where Higgins got the coconut from, but there it was. Higgins had done what none could and presented the coconut to an ecstatic, thankful Kutler.
“If you could’ve seen my son’s eyes, just because Tee knew how bad Kutler wanted that coconut,” Taylor said. “That may sound silly, but he brought it to him and I’ve got a picture of them with the coconut and I always go back to the picture and say this is where it all started for us and Tee. He became my son’s hero immediately.”
The joy Higgins brought to Kutler Green is comparable to how then Oak Ridge head football coach Joe Gaddis felt two years later when he watched Higgins go up for a catch in the playoffs, jumping so high “it looked like he jumped up into the lights that overlooked the stadium,” Gaddis recalled. That same joy was felt by Clemson fans and now Cincinnati Bengals fans as Higgins prepares for Sunday’s Super Bowl to end his second NFL season.
“As great a football player as he is — and he’s great — he’s an even better person,” Gaddis said. “If you don’t like Tee Higgins, there’s something bad or wrong with you. You just like the guy. Whether he’s a superstar or not, he’s just the same Tee that he’s always been.”
Passing the test
Higgins’ act of kindness toward Kutler was one of the first impressions he left on Taylor. As a guidance counselor, she then became acquainted with him on the academic side where he worked just as hard in school as he did on the field and court.
An added motivation arose when Gaddis convinced Higgins, whose first love was basketball, he had a future in football and could make the NFL.
“He was a tall receiver who could run fast,” said Gaddis, who retired from coaching football on Nov. 15 and is now Oak Ridge’s athletic director. “He had great hands, great body control, which he probably got that from basketball. He was just the prototypical wide receiver even as a freshman in high school. You just knew he was going to be great with the potential of growing to 6-3, 6-4 as he is now, that makes him even greater.”
Higgins didn’t start until halfway through his freshman season — “probably because I’m an idiot,” Gaddis joked — and took no time in proving he was just as talented as his coach predicted. Higgins knew being athletically gifted wasn’t enough, though. Achieving his dreams also meant excelling in the classroom.
That’s where Taylor came in. The two spent countless hours in her office studying and going over homework together.
“Nothing was given to Tee as far as his academics,” Taylor said. “A lot of people say, ‘I want to play in the NFL,’ but he started early on in high school taking the appropriate steps to get him to Clemson because Clemson was the next step to the NFL and the preparation that he did, it wasn’t just overlooking college or overlooking high school. He knew that there were steps he had to take to get where he wanted to be in the end.”
Much like in sports, there were moments when Higgins felt like giving up, Taylor recalled, but he persevered. The trials culminated in triumph during the fall of his senior year when he got his ACT score back.
Taylor had the pleasure of finding out first, then walked down to the basketball gym where she gave the future Clemson Tiger the news: his ACT score had qualified him for an athletic scholarship through the NCAA Clearinghouse, now referred to as the NCAA Eligibility Center.
Higgins was overjoyed, falling on his back on the hardwood floor and flailing his arms and legs in the air. He was going to be a college student-athlete.
“I’ll never forget that as long as I live,” Taylor said of the sight.
Elevated elation
The next step to the NFL was Clemson, where Higgins had a high level of success. He became another addition to Wide Receiver U, totaling 35 receptions for 2,448 yards and 27 receiving touchdowns — tied with DeAndre Hopkins (2010-12) and Sammy Watkins (2011-13) for most all-time — with 30 starts in 43 total games played during his three-year career at Clemson.
As a sophomore, the Tennessean was named to the All-ACC second team and caught three passes for 81 yards to go along with a TD in Clemson’s 44-16 national championship-winning performance against Alabama to cap off the 2018 season.
Taylor and her husband, Chris, made it to Louisiana on Jan. 13, 2020 to watch Higgins, then a junior, and Clemson in the national championship game and couldn’t have been happier for him… until a few months later when the Bengals selected him with the 33rd overall pick.
Taylor and her family were there, too, in Knoxville for the draft party to celebrate the monumental moment.
“You feel like you’re in a movie,” she said. “You’ve lived all this time with him and heard him say this is what I want and then you’re actually watching it happen right in front of you.
“To see him get that phone call and that smile on his face and just the celebration, the excitement and then automatically, I watched him flip gears pretty quickly right after (to) I’ve got to get to work. … I’ve got a lot to learn and went into work mode right after that realizing it’s not enough to just get to the NFL. He wanted to be good in the NFL.”
Sunday’s Tee time
While Taylor, Kannon and Kutler were able to go to a Bengals game in Cincinnati during Higgins’ rookie season in 2020 and hang out with him after, they’ll be watching the Super Bowl from Tennessee as Kutler’s longtime Bahamas buddy and the Bengals take on the Los Angeles Rams. It’ll be the second straight year where someone from Oak Ridge is represented. Linebackers coach Mike Caldwell, who also played for Gaddis, won Super Bowl 55 last year with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
As far as Gaddis knows, though, Higgins is the first Oak Ridge alum “at least in this generation” to play in the NFL and reach the Super Bowl as a player, which comes as no surprise to him.
“I’ve coached a lot of great, great players. As far as talent goes, Tee Higgins is the most talented player I’ve ever coached. That’s without question,” Gaddis said. “He had the most impact of any player that I’ve ever coached and certainly the most talent.”
Whether brightening a toddler’s day with a coconut, creating the “Tee Higgins Be the Change” scholarship or delighting sports fans all over the country with highlight-worthy catches, Higgins has always brought joy to others. He’ll be hoping to bring one more moment of elation to Cincinnati fans — and the thousands watching in Oak Ridge — as the Bengals take on the Los Angeles Rams in Super Bowl 56 on Sunday.
“There will probably never ever be another Tee Higgins in my work time that I’ll ever see,” Taylor said. “Those kids are few and far between, but when they come through, you know there’s something special. … He wants people around him to be happy. Like him doing that for my son, he just wanted my son to be happy, wanted to put a smile on his face, and that’s what he does is put a smile on a lot of people’s faces.”
Clemson Tigers in today’s Super Bowl
- Tee Higgins (Bengals)
- DJ Reader (Bengals)
- Jackson Carman (Bengals)
- Tremayne Anchrum (Rams)
This story was originally published February 13, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
