Tireless Tre Tucker conditioned himself for a career year with the Raiders

Tre Tucker was the fastest runner at Cuyahoga Valley Christian Academy, inspiring a repeatable game script from former football coach Dan Larlham. Typically with Tucker in tow, the Royals would dial up a first-down run, throw incomplete on second down and summon the speedster for a third-down sweep.

“Just repeat that until we scored,” Larlham said.

No huddle needed for the Royals to score. No rest needed for their star wide receiver.

“I caught it a few times in my career … I’m signaling plays and before I signaled the play, I look up … and he’s breathing heavy,” Larlham recalled. “He probably just had a carry or ran a post out to a decoy with a 40-yard sprint. I’d look up at him … ‘Can you carry it?’ He always nodded yes.

“There was never a time he couldn’t handle the workload.”

A fourth-year wideout for the Las Vegas Raiders and leader this year in receiving yards, Tucker sustains his sprinter speed with a motor and gas tank that don’t relent.

Coach Klint Kubiak refers to Tucker as the “best-conditioned athlete” he has ever been around, his finishing kick a force for Las Vegas. Tucker, 25 and on pace for a 1,151-yard season, in the fourth quarter ranks 11th in the NFL in receiving yards (168 on 10 receptions) and is tied for the league lead in touchdown catches (three).

He’s also expanding his profile beyond that of typical speed receiver, running more than go routes and posts as a focal point in Kubiak’s offense.

Said quarterback Kirk Cousins, the NFL’s leader in touchdown passes: “Sometimes when you’re really, really fast, it’s tempting to only have him do the fast things and have the slower guys do the slower things. There’s nothing wrong with having Tre do those things too and wear different hats. He’s shown he can do a lot. He doesn’t just need to be the fast guy.”

Tucker, built like he’s made of bronze at 5-foot-9, 182 pounds, is muscled like an Olympic sprinter with footwork befitting of ballroom dancer. A third-round pick out of Cincinnati drafted by the Raiders in 2023, he’s a warrior in the weight room and ferocious on the field — never cheating a rep, set or run.

“He was a pitbull, man. He just kept going and going,” said Brady Collins, Tucker’s strength coach at Cincinnati.

Pitbulls are fast and pitbulls are strong but pitbulls are loving and loyal, too, and Tucker still text messages Collins, now at Wisconsin, about “Weight-room wins.” Whenever he goes back to Northeast Ohio, he reconnects with Larlham and his family. Larlham’s 16-year-old son text messages Tucker about football.

Tucker always replies.

“He really just wants to love his people,” Larlham said. “He does it at a high level because Tre does everything at a high level.”

Focused on conditioning

Tucker took to track and field and wrestling the way he took to football in his youth, crediting his tenures as a sprinter — he was the Ohio state champion in the 100- and 200-meter dashes and long jump — and grappler for building his aerobic base. On the track, he would “run all day” to build his burst and stamina, using wrestling and its grueling workouts to forge his finishing fortitude.

Though Tucker stopped wrestling his freshman year, it solidified the value of conditioning.

“Because in the third period when your guy is tired and you’re not … you can see it,” Tucker explained.

“On the football field, (there’s) nothing like the fourth quarter when you’re going against a guy and you’re killing him all day and you’re still doing it in the fourth quarter.”

Tucker’s straight-line speed and will were showcased by the lights his freshman year, his 110-pound frame destined to grow to a 160-ish his senior season. Larlham said “he was never putting himself in a position where scholarship football wasn’t going to happen,” his commitment reflected with perfect attendance.

To practice. To runs. To lifts. To dinners.

“He wasn’t going to hear anyone telling him he was too small,” Larlham added.

At Cincinnati, Tucker’s commitment to the weight room paid off with 20 more pounds that didn’t compromise his speed, but rather made him an NFL prospect. Collins called him “Wolverine” for the way he healed like the X-Men hero. Teammates who called him out in to race in practice were usually dusted.

No matter the task.

“Tre was just the most competitive dude in the world,” Collins said.

”If someone thought they were faster than him or someone won a rep, Tre would go right next to him and be like, ‘Let’s do it. Put your hand down. Let’s go.’ Any rope, right? Any type of one-on-one. He was relentless. … I could never remember a time where that kid was gassed, tired, needed a break.”

‘Run all day’

Kubiak caught wind of Tucker’s wind when the Raiders reconvened in April, the fourth-year wideout living in Las Vegas to train at Intermountain Health Performance Center. He said he uses his offseason downtime to build his body — even “my toes,” he says — with a lesser focus on football skills.

“I’m working my body 24/7, all day,” he says.

Cousins noticed during organized team activities “when other guys started dragging, he still kept his speed up. … You still have to understand he’s human, and even though he’s really well-conditioned, let’s not run him into the ground either. So, you try to find that balance, but he can go for a long time.”

Tucker declined to share the “secrets” that have him peaking in his fourth pro season, but cited the teachings of David Goggins, the ex-Navy SEAL turned motivational speaker. Tucker said he read Goggins’ 2018 memoir, “Can’t Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds.”

He also champions the “40 percent rule” Goggins made famous: “When you’re tired, you have another 40 percent left.”

Except Tucker never, ever tires.

“When I first got here, just seeing how he can just run all day from the jump, I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, he’s different,’” said wide receiver Malik Benson, Tucker’s rookie mentee. “It’s just an everyday thing for him. He just goes in and works super hard. You see why he’s able to run all day.

“You want to be one of the best like him, you’ve got to be able to run all day.”

Contact Sam Gordon at [email protected]. Follow @BySamGordon on X.