FORT MORGAN — He’s built with the heart of Winnie The Pooh. Trey McBride, the best tight end in the NFL, the cat who’s going to win you a fantasy football championship this fall, is one of those serial huggers, charming and disarming to the last.
“Trey!”
“Come here!”
HUG!
“Trey!”
“Thank you for coming!”
HUG!
“Trey!”
“So glad you could make it!”
HUG!
The two-time Pro Bowler and ex-CSU Rams star spent at least half his lunch hour Friday in a black cut-off t-shirt, signing autographs for kids at his free football camp at Legion Field, his old stomping grounds. He spent a lot of the other half greeting old friends and making new ones, country roots and cowboy boots.
“Still think of you as Fort Morgan,” I told him.
McBride grinned at that one.
“So do I, man,” the Arizona Cardinals receiver said. “I try not to let anything change. I’m just very grateful for the situation I’ve been put in. It’s been a lot of fun. I’m just excited to be here to give back to these kids. And that’s what it’s all about, man — just giving back.”
, with free admission for grades 3 through 8. Some 300 youngsters showed up, roughly 150 in each session, a new record-high for attendance. Everybody on-hand was a volunteer; lunch for the kids came via donations. Former Broncos great Joel Dreessen, another Fort Morgan native with NFL bona fides, supervised one station; brothers Toby and Dylan worked another.
“It’s cool. It’s a lot of fun. I love being back here, being around the guys,” Trey continued. “This is a place that’s meant so much to me, and I’m just hoping I can give a little bit back to it.”
They can take McBride out of Legion Field, but you’ll never take the Legion Field out of McBride.
“You’ve got to credit a lot of that to Fort Morgan, too,” said Toby, who works a sales gig in Denver these days. “Just growing up humble. That’s what we were taught out here — just do it the right way. And he didn’t really know how good he was going to be until he got out of Fort Morgan, got out of Fort Collins.”
Really good. Like, crazy good. The debate isn’t whether McBride is the best player to come out of Fort Morgan, but whether he’s the best tight end in the NFL. His 126 catches last fall were the most by any player at that position in NFL history. He’s the first tight end to ever to rack up 100 or more catches in back-to-back seasons. of more than 70 coaches, executives and experts that rank the top 10 players at each position, the former Rams star jumped from fourth in ’25 to second in the circuit this year, behind only the Raiders’ Brock Bowers.
“He’s still a great dude. He’s still my younger brother. And we’ve got the same great siblings, great parents,” Toby laughed. “Dylan and I still hold it over him, that yeah, he’s the No. 1 tight end in the NFL, (but) he never won a state title in high school. I’ve got a few. Dylan’s got one. We’ve still got some things to hold over his head.”
Toby went to two CSU bowl games. Trey’s era had two coaches in FoCo — Mike Bobo and Steve Addazio — and won a Mackey Award, but never saw the postseason.
Although that Mackey’s got a bit of narrative to it now, too. Trey told the “Busin’ With The Boys” podcast earlier this month that someone in the Rams athletic department four years ago had grumbled when informed by McBride that he was keeping the original trophy and that the school would have to spring for the money to purchase a replica of its own to display. (It wasn’t former athletic director Joe Parker, a source told me Friday.)
“I mean, (CSU fans probably) weren’t super-thrilled with it. I probably shouldn’t have said as much as I did,” Trey McBride cracked. “I’m very proud to be a Ram. I love Fort Collins. I wasn’t trying to to diss on them at all. Maybe it came out that way, but that wasn’t the intention at all … CSU holds a special place in my heart. So I love everything about it.”
He loves Jim Mora, too. McBride even hung out with the new Rams football coach and his staff a little during spring ball a few months back.
“Very excited for him,” McBride continued. “I think he’s going to do a really good job there. Hopefully you can turn that program around, man. It’s a great place to live. And I think he’s the guy for it.”
The Broncos’ Zach Allen, a former Cardinals teammate, remains a pal. So are the guys in the tight end room in Dove Valley. McBride got to know Vance Joseph when the latter was the Cardinals’ DC. On October 25, the defending AFC runners-up take on Arizona in Glendale.
“They might have to close Fort Morgan that weekend,” I said.
“I mean, I love the Broncos. I grew up cheering for them,” McBride said. “But, Week 7, it’s Cardinals all the time.”
When McBride broke the NFL’s tight end reception record last fall, Fort Morgan athletic director Greg Edson sent a congratulatory text.
“And 100% of the time you reach out, he gets back to you. Which is pretty cool,” Edson told me. “Speaks volumes of his character and the kind of man that he is.
“Yes, there’s a lot of God-given ability there. But, boy, if you don’t put your nose to the grindstone and do something with your ability, it’s useless. And I think that’s the lesson kids need to draw from.”
That, and to leave a place better than you found it. McBride was named the Cardinals’ nominee for the NFL’s Walter Payton Man of the Year award in 2024, parlaying that into the launch of The McBrides are working on its launching the foundation’s first fund-raising golf event down in Arizona soon.
Fort Morgan is a town of 11,000 and change. The typical graduating class at the high school is around 220 or so. Yet the city’s produced three NFL players over the past 25 years, with McBride following in the footsteps of Dreessen and former Tampa Bay Bucs lineman Ryan Jensen into the pros. That’s a pretty good ratio.
“I mean, the Cherry Creeks and the Valor Christians and our premier programs in the state produce great athletes every year,” Edson said. “And for us to be able to get through guys at that level and with long NFL careers, man, it’s really cool,”
Even cooler: Edson’s getting the wheels churning with the school board this summer to clear a runway for Fort Morgan retire the numbers of McBride, Dreessen and Jensen at soon as next year.
That’s not really up to me, so we’ll see,” Trey said. “Hopefully, one day, I can get that to happen. But very grateful to be back home to put on a camp. Man, this is a very special day.”
A special dude, too. Between sessions, Trey sat at tiny table underneath a little tent at the 50-yard line, inscribing for a queue that nearly stretched to the red zone.
At one point, he handed a youngster back a white football with a Cardinals logo and his John Hancock in black. The kid responded by tearing out of the VIP area like he’d stolen the thing. His old man, meanwhile, just stood there, aghast.
“Hold on, hold on. Stop.” his dad demanded, turning to the prodigal blur behind him.
The kid stopped.
“What do you say?” Dad asked.
The kid turned back to the big man at the tiny table.
“Thank you,” he said.
“You’re welcome,” Trey replied.
The young man looked at the football again. Then he ran like the wind to join his friends, a legend’s unseen smile at his back.
