Miami Northwestern’s Atwell has been told he’s small. On NFL Draft Day he’ll stand tall
Tutu Atwell was 4 years old the first time his mother, La’Kia Firsher, took her son to the Liberty City Optimist Club to sign him up for football.
He had been holding a football in his hand since basically the day he was born. His father, Tutu Atwell Sr., was a star at Miami High and a record-setting wide receiver for the Minnesota Golden Gophers, and footballs perpetually flew around the household in an ongoing game of catch between father and son. Atwell Jr. knew he was too good for the other 4-year-olds running around Charles Hadley Park.
He sidled up against a fence among a group of 7-year-olds preparing to meet with their coaches. He stood out — even among kids his age he was usually one of the smallest — and one of the coaches beckoned for him.
“Young jit, come here,” he shouted. “How old [are] you?”
Atwell fessed up and an assistant coach tried to vouch for him. “Shorty’s good,” he said. “I know he can catch.” Atwell already had a reputation.
At 2, he would ride a kick scooter around Liberty City and draw stares from confused onlookers, marveling at how coordinated the toddler was. At 3, he was already playing with older kids in some of the Miami neighborhood’s famously physical street football games.
The coach didn’t relent. He sent Atwell back to the youngest players and, after Atwell briefly tried to quit, he suited at quarterback for the Liberty City Warriors.
“He was,” Firsher said, “a little too advanced.”
Atwell spent the next 15 years hearing over and over again that he’s too small. He was too small to play with the older kids. Eventually, he was even too small to play with kids his age. He was too small to play quarterback in college football and now, apparently, he’s too small to go in the first round of the 2021 NFL Draft on Thursday.
This week, someone will take a chance on him, probably Friday on the second day of the NFL Draft. After three thrilling seasons as a wide receiver for the Louisville Cardinals, Atwell projects as a mid-round pick and there’s still an outside chance he could land in the bottom of the first round.
It’s not a surprise to see Atwell on the precipice of the NFL after a championship-laden career in South Florida — it’s just how smooth his circuitous path has been. He only had two scholarship offers from Power 5 Conference programs when he graduated from Miami Northwestern, with teams unsure of how well the 5-8, 150-pound quarterback would be able to translate to college football, even with a position change.
He answered those questions quickly.
By Atwell’s fourth day of spring practices in Louisville, former Cardinals coach Bobby Petrino was already talking about how Louisville needed to “find ways to get him the ball.”
As a freshman, he caught 24 passes for 406 yards and two touchdowns in his first season at wideout. As a sophomore, he broke the Cardinals’ single-season record with 1,276 yards, had four catches of 70 yards or longer and earned first-team All-American honors from Pro Football Focus.
Atwell was firmly on the NFL radar, even if scouts at the next level — once again — weren’t entirely sure what to make of a 5-8 receiver. The equation became even more complicated when, as Sports Illustrated reported, Atwell weighed in at just 149 pounds at the NFL’s medical combine in Indianapolis earlier this month.
“I don’t really much care about the size. That don’t faze me. I don’t let that faze me,” Atwell said. “I don’t think my size is going to be a problem for me.”
Liberty City legend
Reggie McKnight had heard all about Atwell and, like a lot of people, he had his doubts.
He heard legends about this pint-sized quarterback making every Pop Warner Little Scholars team in Florida look foolish. Atwell’s Warriors were the biggest hurdle McKnight’s Northwest Falcons would have to get past in the postseason, so McKnight went out to scout a game.
“I was like, Ah, man, he’s a little quarterback. He can’t be that bad,” said McKnight, who’s now the offensive coordinator at Miami Edison and was an assistant coach at Northwestern all four years Atwell was there. “I went to see him and I was like,’ It seems like that kid’s floating on air with his speed.’”
Atwell led Liberty City to the 2012 Pee Wee national championship, and was actually still small enough to stick around and defend his title. Atwell Sr. suggested his son stay down. Atwell Jr. rebuffed him and led the Warriors to a Jr. Midget national title in 2013.
“He’s like, ‘Yeah, I want to play,’” Atwell Sr. said. “’I don’t want to stay down and play with these jits.’”
Atwell was supposed to spend his freshman season on junior varsity, adjusting to the size and speed of high school football, and figuring out whether he would keep playing quarterback. Two days before the Bulls’ lone preseason game, Northwestern’s starting quarterback got hurt. Atwell stepped in with just a few days’ notice.
The original starter was back for the Bulls’ opener a week later. He lasted one drive.
“They took him out and put Tutu back in, and we never looked back,” McKnight said. “Had he been 6-3, you’re talking about a Lamar Jackson.”
As a junior, Atwell was the Miami Herald’s Offensive Player of the Year for Classes 9A-6A in Miami-Dade County and scholarship offers started to trickle in.
A few weeks before Atwell’s senior year began, Louisville offered him. Former Northwestern coach Stephen Field was the Cardinals’ director of high school relations — he’s now the tight ends coach for the Miami Hurricanes, who didn’t recruit Atwell — and he pushed the rest of the staff to recruit him. Atwell committed less than a week before starting his senior season.
“He wasn’t frustrated,” Firsher said. “He always said whoever didn’t give him that opportunity was going to regret it.
He was even better as a senior, throwing for 1,489 yards and 13 touchdowns, and running for 741 and eight. He capped the 2017 season by leading Northwestern to its first state title since 2007, ending the Bulls’ longest drought since they won their first Florida High School Athletic Association championship in 1995.
Northwestern finished the season Christmas Eve in Phoenix for the GEICO State Champions Bowl Series. The Bulls flew home and the next day, on Christmas, Atwell headed to the beach with McKnight to run through wide receiver drills.
He only had 14 days until classes began in Kentucky. It was time to get ready.
The natural
Occasionally, Atwell goes back and looks at video from his first days of spring practice as a freshman, and laughs at “pretty much everything.”
“I never played the position before,” Atwell said. “It’s like, Damn. Look at my stance. Look how I’m running that route, but I’ve come a long way.”
Ultimately, the move didn’t faze Atwell too much. All throughout Atwell’s childhood, his father planted the wideout seeds in his mind, knowing his son would probably be too short to play quarterback in college. Firsher insists her son always wanted to play receiver, anyway — like his father.
After Atwell’s sophomore season, his dad finally gave him the stamp of approval.
“He was a little better than what I was. I finally acknowledged that and I gave him the nod on that,” Atwell Sr. said. “He definitely had the genes. He shocked me.”
Atwell Jr. said he mostly studies Kansas City Chiefs star Tyreek Hill, the NFL’s best wide receiver under six feet. When Hill was preparing for the 2016 NFL Draft, he measured 5-8 1/8 and 185 pounds at the NFL Combine.
Hill had more than 35 pounds on Atwell, but Atwell looks at Hill as a template for how to thrive at 5-8.
“Just the way he runs his routes, his quickness and how uses speed,” Atwell said. “Once I’m on a team, I put that muscle on and then it’s over with.”
This story was originally published April 26, 2021 at 11:33 AM.
