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Kevin Higgins loved a lot of things about Greg Dortch’s game when he recruited him out of Highland Springs High School in 2015. Dortch’s change of direction was better than any player the coaching staff had ever secured. His hand-eye coordination was excellent. Higgins loved his hands. He loved his route running. He loved how competitive the Virginia 5A player of the year was.
There was just one problem — the same one that kept every Power Five school except Wake Forest and Maryland from offering Dortch a scholarship.
“His size was his size,” said Higgins, then the Demon Deacons associate head coach and wide receivers coach. “He’s under 5-8, so like everybody else in the country, we had concerns.”
Despite those reservations, Wake Forest had enjoyed some success with smaller receivers in the slot and Dortch showed promise in the return game so the coaching staff invited him to offseason camp. That’s when he turned heads.
Some turned in amazement. Some turned in anguish. It depended on their perspective.
“There’s a drill we do called shake-and-bake,” Higgins said. “It’s a change-of-direction drill; a one-on-one, make-you-miss drill on only half the field. One guy has the ball and he’s standing basically 15 yards away from a defensive player who’s facing him. The guy with the ball runs sideways towards the sideline and he can score by staying in between the goal line and the 10-yard line.
“All the defensive back has to do is tag you, but Greg would just make everybody miss. He would put a juke on a guy and the guy would just fall down.”
Intrigued by this kid who hadn’t yet earned a scholarship, the coaching staff upped the ante by enlisting their scholarship DBs. Their sole focus: tag Dortch.
“Nobody could touch this guy,” Higgins said. “It got to the point where all of our veteran guys would come out of the stands and just gather around him to watch. Our upper class guys were going crazy; just howling. His performance in the shake-and-bake drill has never been duplicated in the 11 years that we’ve been here.”
Since signing with the New York Jets as an undrafted free agent in 2019, it has taken five NFL seasons for Dortch to juke his way to a major role in an NFL offense. He was on the practice squad in New York. He only earned opportunity as a punt returner in Carolina in 2020, and after a breakout season with the Arizona Cardinals in 2022 (52 receptions for 467 yards and two TDs), his role diminished in Jonathan Gannon’s first year as coach (2023) with a higher draft pick (Rondale Moore) and a bigger contract (Marquise “Hollywood” Brown) ahead of him on the depth chart.
The Cardinals have since traded Moore while Brown signed with the Chiefs in free agency, penciling Dortch in as the starting slot receiver.
Dortch plans to replace that pencil with a Sharpie.
“I’ve worked my ass off to earn all of this that I’m getting,” he said. “But this is where the real work starts. All the things that I’ve done leading up to this point have just prepared me for this moment and I think that this is just the beginning. You guys probably haven’t even seen anything yet.”
One thing Dortch has already shown the Cardinals and their fan base is the same thing that he showed the Wake Forest coaching staff in camp nine years ago. The same thing he showed when he set the school record for TD receptions in a game with four against Louisville in 2017, and then tied it against Rice in 2018. The same thing he showed when he tied the school record with two punt returns for touchdowns in a win against Towson.
“I feel like Dortch is unguardable as far as one-on-one,” quarterback Kyler Murray said.
Murray’s perception syncs with reality. Dortch excelled against man coverage, and when you consider that Marvin Harrison Jr. is now drawing attention from defenses, and that Michael Wilson and Trey McBride are a year older and better, the potential for increased production from Dortch is there.
Dortch is well aware of the criticisms of his size. He has been hearing it since high school, and he has been using it as fuel ever since.
“Every game that he played, he played like he had something to prove to the world,” Higgins said. “He was trying to prove that he belonged.”
That drive kept him on the minds of the coaches during his redshirt freshman season on the scout team.
“We always heard stories about what Dortch did in practice,” Higgins said. “It was always, ‘Who did Dortch torch today?'”
The chip on his shoulder is what drove Dortch to finish a game in which he punctured his small intestine when he dove toward the goal line and landed on that orange pylon against Louisville on Oct. 28, 2017. It’s what drove him to return from a high-ankle sprain after three weeks when the training staff said it would take five or six.
Despite a decorated career at Oklahoma that included the 2018 Heisman Trophy, and despite his early NFL success, Murray knows a thing or two about the undersized label and how it can fuel a player. It doesn’t alter his view of what he can do, and it doesn’t alter his opinion of Dortch.
“He’s just got the nuance and the savvy to him that you want in a receiver and not everybody has it,” Murray said. “If he was 6-3, he’d be a top-five pick in the NFL. That’s the type of football player that he is. And again, he loves the game. I’ll go to war with Greg every day.”
Dortch will still have a role in the return game and he is intrigued by the possibilities of the NFL’s new kickoff rules.
“I haven’t seen it in person live, but just watching it on film, I think there’s tons of opportunities for me to be explosive and make plays,” he said. “You don’t have guys running down full speed. It doesn’t start until I either catch the ball or the ball hits the ground, so that’s kind of an advantage to me.
“The game’s a little bit slower and everybody’s at like one level so should you break past that first level, it’s just you and the kicker. I’ll take my chances.”
That said, a greater offensive role has been the goal since Dortch declared for the NFL Draft on Dec. 23, 2018.
“I’m more than just a returner,” he said. “I feel like I’ve shown that. I’m going to continue to show that.
“I’m just excited to step into this new role. This is a big year for me.”
(Getty Images)
It’s a role for which Dortch feels he is well suited, and in which he feels comfortable.
“Absolutely,” he said. “Me being comfortable comes from the work that I put in — not while everybody’s watching, but the work that I put in when nobody’s watching. I think that work allows me to be confident, and it allows me to perform to my best ability.”
Dortch can’t predict how he will be used in a Cardinals offense that features a lot of weapons, so he is sticking to the age-old mantra of controlling what he can control.
“I think we’ll have to see,” he said. “I don’t have all the answers right now, but I do know that when my number gets called and I have an opportunity to make a play, I’m gonna make the play.”
Top photo of Greg Dortch via Getty Images
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