Rivers' first start was opening night in 2006 at Oakland. In the fourth quarter, he hit Gates on a 4-yard corner route. Rivers threw only 11 passes that night,NFL Cheap Jerseys China, two to Gates.
Gates had a daughter at the time and made what he felt was the safest choice: the NFL. All these years later, he's certainly erased the doubters.
"That's how it started," Gates said.
"Football was like, nothing I did was bad. Ultimately it wears on you. It wears on your confidence."
Rivers and Gates have connected on 82 touchdown passes, the most between a quarterback and tight end. Gates' 109 TD catches rank him seventh all-time.
SAN DIEGO (AP) — Antonio Gates recalls Nick Saban telling him he'd one day be an NFL first-round draft pick and that he could play both football and his beloved basketball at Michigan State.
Gates, 36, joined the Chargers as a rookie free agent in 2003, a year after leading Kent State to the Elite Eight in the NCAA Tournament.  He caught his first touchdown pass on Nov. 9, 2003.
Neither happened.
"I was fired up, obviously, to throw a touchdown in my first start,Hockey Jerseys 2018 Cheap," Rivers said. "I remember going up to him and saying, 'Hey, that's the first of many.' And he was kind of like, 'Get out of here. I haven't got a ball all day. I don't want to hear that.'
"I think it's great. I'm not surprised, either," said Gonzalez, who plans to congratulate Gates via Twitter when he breaks the touchdown mark.
After playing at two junior colleges,Cheap Air Max 95 Sale, Gates ended up starring in hoops at Kent State. Along the way he was noticing that people he knew were getting drafted high by NFL teams.
"He pushed me to the limit to be the best tight end I could be," said Gonzalez, a studio analyst for CBS' "NFL Today."
"It was against Minnesota. From Doug Flutie," Gates said. "Drew Brees was here and I guess he kind of didn't get off to a good start and Flutie got in the game and I scored a touchdown."
"I love that he made the right decision," Gonzalez said. "With  the legacy he's set, he's right there with the other guy from that franchise, Kellen Winslow, two of best to ever put on cleats and play the tight end position."
Yet here's Gates, the former basketball star from Kent State,White Womens NFL Jerseys, needing three touchdown catches to break Tony Gonzalez's NFL record of 111 for a tight end.
"We didn't see eye to eye. I felt he sat in front of my momma and my father and said I could do both," said Gates, who had grown up idolizing Michigan's Fab Five. "I told him, 'I came here to do both.' He said, 'No, football.' "
"Wait a minute, something ain't adding up," Gates said. "This is my circle and everybody's getting drafted.
Among them was Dwight Smith — "my homeboy from high school" — who went to Akron and was a third-round pick of Tampa Bay in 2001. Smith had two interceptions of Oakland's Rich Gannon, the league MVP, in the Bucs' Super Bowl win at San Diego's Qualcomm Stadium in January 2003.
Being 6-foot-4 and weighing 250 pounds, Gates knows he made the right choice in going to the NFL rather than trying to pursue an NBA career.
"So now Nick Saban, what he had told me, started to make sense at that point," Gates said. "Because he told me I was a first-rounder. He swore up and down I'd go first round if I just played football. I was like, 'Uh, I don't want to hear that. You just want me out there. I don't want to hear that, Nick Saban. You just don't want me on the basketball court.'
Brees regained his starting job but left after 2005, and Rivers became the starter.
"That's the part that's kind of like the chip on my shoulder when I play," Gates said. "In my mind, I'd be thinking, 'I wish I would have given it a chance, to see what would have happened.' But it's hard to see it because of the success over time playing football. It's kind of hard to say now.
"But I loved basketball. That was my heart. It's like going to the prom, man. You've got two girls and you love one and she don't show you no attention and you have to go out of your way. You're trying to get her attention. And then here's a girl who's just wanting to go to prom with you: 'Love you, like your height. You smell good,' " Gates said with a laugh. "That's how football was. Everything was great. 'You tall, you fast. You big.' And basketball was like, 'Uh, can you do it at this level?' It was always the ifs ands and buts  when it came to basketball. Golly, no matter what I do, I average 20 points a game and they were like, 'Do it against Kentucky.' I had 27 on that. I had 33 on Boston Co