Kyle Dixon, the 26-year-old wide receiver from Carlinville, Illinois, was a multi-sport athlete in high school. He was a fantastic wide receiver, a fantastic defensive back and an even better pitcher.
His journey out of Carlinville High School started on the mound. It's now taken him onto the sidelines for the New England Patriots.
How in the world did that happen?
When you ask Dixon — now on the Patriots practice squad — he still doesn't really know. He can try to explain his winding road to the NFL, but there's so many stops along the way that sometimes he forgets a few things. So here's everyone else he's crossed paths with to help fill in the puzzle.
Kyle, born in 2001 to Tim and Monica Dixon, played baseball, football and wrestled in high school. He was excellent in everything he did. His coaches rave about his athletic abilities, almost to a fault.
Don Borgini, former Carlinville baseball head coach: "He was a fierce competitor."
Monica Dixon, Kyle's mother: "He excelled in all of his sports, but was looking for ways to improve his skills. He was always looking online for new training techniques."
Kyle Dixon: "Baseball was a little bit more special for me."
Maybe it was just the athletic juices in his veins, but Kyle always lived for the moment. The homemade pitchers mound that Kyle and his grandfather made in his backyard certainly helped. Once high school rolled around, baseball is where he found his groove.
Borgini: "Every coach on Earth wants a kid that wants the ball in the moment, and Kyle is certainly that guy."
Monica Dixon: "When he did get to pitch, I had a lot of anxiety. His dad could always handle that pressure better than me."
Kyle Dixon: "It was something I really enjoyed a lot."
Borgini: "In a sectional game, he had 19 strikeouts of the 21 batters and it was a tremendous performance by him that I won't forget. ... It is the top (game) for me as far as a pitcher goes (that I've ever seen)."
Kyle Dixon: "It might have been the last game I ever played (in high school). ... We ended up losing that game."
Borgini: "He was attracting a lot of attention."
Monica Dixon: "As parents, it was nice to see his hard work pay off when he got his scholarship. He earned it."
Kyle officially committed to Southern Illinois after a coach at a local JUCO help connect the two parties. But he had committed when Ken Henderson was the head coach. Henderson was fired and the abrupt change caught Kyle — who was on his way to vacation — off guard. Still, from the first day on campus, he stood out.
Lance Rhodes, Southern Illinois baseball head coach: "He wasn't the typical high school-sized kid that was coming to college. He was very put together, just a good looking kid. He definitely looked the part."
Kyle Dixon: "You don't really know what to expect as a freshman, especially with the new staff that didn't recruit you. It was an interesting start to college."
Rhodes: "He (was) just as big as the seniors. He had a ton of ability and he threw extremely hard."
Kyle Dixon: "I was off to a pretty good start my freshman year and then we stopped. We couldn't go into our facility to train with it being COVID. We couldn't go to a lot of the gyms or anything to work out."
His freshman year was mangled by the pandemic, where he only played in eight games. He pitched in four more as a sophomore, but a 22.50 earned run average plagued him. It was a pair of trying years for Dixon. He watched pro pitchers like Max Scherzer and Aroldis Chapman to try and figure out his form.
Kyle Dixon: "I became very focused on looking at MLB pitchers' mechanics and then trying to figure out how I wanted mine to look in regards to that. ... I think I became too focused on mechanics."
Monica Dixon: "I think he started putting more pressure on himself to be perfect and it just wasn't happening. As a parent, it was hard to watch."
Rhodes: "Kyle was always one of those guys that the feel of pitching was something that he needed to develop and work on, and I really think the COVID break in action ... was probably the toughest thing for him."
Kyle Dixon: "I kept thinking if I just keep figuring out whatever mechanical thing it is, then it's gonna play, then it's gonna click. The reality, that was the problem in and of itself."
He didn't want to stick around. After his scholarship was pulled, Southern Illinois Edwardsville — who did research on him coming out of high school — came calling.
Sean Lyons, SIUE baseball head coach: "I had a local umpire stop by our baseball office, come in and tell our staff there's this really good arm pitching, high school kid, not too far from here. ... When Kyle decided to transfer from (Southern Illinois) Carbondale, we kind of had a connection."
Monica Dixon: "We just went with the flow. He would always talk to us about moving and the reasoning for it."
Kyle Dixon: "Ironically, the pitching coach there was the one who recruited me to Carbondale. I was really comfortable with him."
But that coach would later take the head coaching gig for SIUE's softball program, and so Dixon was left with another surprising staff change. Still, his stuff on the mound never left.
Lyons: "He could throw the baseball in the lower-to-mid 90s. Sometimes command and where the location of that was sometimes a mystery for him. But when it was right, man, it was really good."
Kyle Dixon: "I wouldn't say I had a good year, but it was a better year. It wasn't good, but it was progress compared to the year before."
Lyons: "He had a skillset on the mound that could have possibly given him the option ... to play professionally as a baseball player."
Actually?
Kyle Dixon: "Without a doubt."
Maybe it was time to get out of Illinois. Kyle called Lyons to let him know that he would be entering the transfer portal, a decision that took his coach by surprise. After having some summer league teammates hype up Georgia Gwinnett, Kyle then made the trip down south to a team that would go on to make eight-straight NAIA World Series appearances, a streak still active.
Jeremy Sheetinger, former Georgia Gwinnett baseball head coach: "When you see a kid that looks like Kyle and he's built like an Adonis, you know that there's something in there. ... We just feel like sometimes Division I schools, if a kid doesn't gave it, they get pushed to the side. We could spent a little bit more time with them."
Braxton Meguiar, former Georgia Gwinnett second baseman (who played baseball with Mike Vrabel's son, Carter, at Wabash Valley Community College in 2021): "I always remember Kyle's work ethic being different. He never changed. He never wavered, even when he wasn't having success."
Like the previous two schools, it just wasn't in the cards. Kyle had the yips, most commonly associated when throwing a baseball accurately becomes a chore. He'd walk away from sports entirely at the end of the season.
Kyle Dixon: "I was still kind of holding out optimism that I was going to be able to figure it out and turn it around."
Sheetinger: "He was good for a hit an inning, a strikeout an inning and a walk an inning. ... Kyle didn't make our postseason roster."
Meguiar: "He was having some control problems."
Sheetinger: "He's a guy that didn't impact us on the field, but he impacted with the kind of kid he was."
Kyle Dixon: "I just tried to be as good as a teammate as I could and really just not let what was happening to me affect my teammates. It's never fair to them. I think I was partially being myself and then having a little awareness about how not to act."
Monica Dixon: "We were sad for him. His love for the sport had faded. He was done completely."
Sheetinger: "Our pitchers threw footballs. But more people started watching the way Kyle would go catch footballs. You could see it coming together."
Baseball was in the rearview window. Instead, Kyle moved back home and picked up a job in sales, selling marketing tools for pool companies. All the while, filming workout videos to see what could come of his extra years of eligibility. He still had the itch to do something with his athletic talents.
Kyle Dixon: "I technically do have eligibility left, so why not try to get recruited? I wanted to actually play. "
A friend on Culver-Stockton's coaching staff connected with Kyle. He let him know that there could be a spot for him if he wanted to switch sports. But it wasn't an immediate fit. A full scholarship offer nearly sent Kyle to Grand Valley State. Then Culver-Stockton put all their chips on the table, bumping their proposed offer from a partial scholarship to a full one.
Tom Sallay, Culver-Stockton football head coach: "A little bit of blind faith, just looking at his body type and seeing his high school film."
Kyle said the choice was easy.
Kyle Dixon: "This school really wants me. Obviously, the money's there. It's going to be a great opportunity, like I'm gonna get to play right away."
Sallay: "It was fun to see him kind of grow and figure things out as he went along."
He would put up 25 total touchdowns in two seasons, and became the school's first player to ever record 1,000 receiving yards twice. He became an All-American and was invited to the Hula Bowl. That's where the Patriots first expressed interest.
Todd Downing, Patriots wide receivers coach: "A lot of physical traits on tape, like you could see him kind of have some natural movement ability and just athleticism."
Kyle Dixon: "A lot of the stuff that I was trying to learn before even getting there was just going onto YouTube and watching NFL receivers, and seeing different things they did to get open and using that to self teach."
Downing: "(He) kind of looked like a ball of clay to me. ... The fact that he played with some toughness and effort and finish and physicality, that was the cherry on top."
On the third day of the NFL draft, Kyle's draft party was well-attended. It felt like the entire town had come to take part in the afternoon. That's where his life changed, on and off the field.
Sallay: "You get to watch a kid realize that he gets to go out and do something that he's dreamed about for a long, long time."
Kyle Dixon: (Downing) calls me and say that they were gonna make me an offer. ... You've got 30 minutes to make a decision. So I went with them and then after that — probably 15 minutes later — I actually went out and proposed to my wife."
Borgini: "It was just a real emotional day for him and everybody else around. So proud of him."
Kyle arrived in New England for rookie minicamp, and remained on the field until a back injury held him out a few weeks.
Kyle Dixon: "I was trying to be as optimistic as possible (after my injury). It is what it is. I was gonna do everything I could to get back in time."
He'd get healthy, play in the final two preseason games and put up a team-high eight catches in the final game against Cleveland. Behren Morton, the Patriots' third-string quarterback called it an impressive outing.
Downing: "He was a little banged up through camp, so it was kind of in and then out, and then in and then out. What he showed us what a passion for the game. He was a gym rat. He stayed in the facility and watched a bunch of tape, studied his playbook. Stayed on top of everything."
Justin Hamilton, Patriots cornerbacks coach: "When I'm around him, all I ever see him do is 'OK, you need me to do that? All right, I'll do it and do it to the best of my ability,' which is pretty cool."
He's yet to make his NFL debut (Dixon was released during roster cuts and re-signed to the practice squad), but he's starting to get used to New England living. Kyle is relatively quiet, but has a close relationship with his teammates, who say they've seen him grow as a person and a player as the year moves along.
Cameron Dorner, Patriots wide receiver: "We walk together to pretty much every meeting. Sit (and) have breakfast together."
Efton Chism III, Patriots wide receiver: "He's awesome. Just trying to just see him grow and develop as a football player after not playing for so long, he's open about it. He's so open to learning new skills."
Dorner: "Not much of a talker, but he is a worker for sure."
Chism: "He's pretty chill, pretty quiet guy. I think he's taking a lot in."
Tommy DeVito, Patriots quarterback: "He's got a good mindset. He works. He comes in every day. He's a little more (of a) quiet dude, but he'll come in here working."
Andrew Rupcich, Patriots offensive guard (and Culver-Stockton alum): "He's a hard worker and he's shown that since he's gotten here. He's willing to put in the effort and the work to be here. That's the biggest thing for guys like me and him to survive in this league."
DeMario Douglas, Patriots wide receiver: "Just to see his growth. He started to build a confidence as he got the playbook down. ... He goes out there and plays free."
DeVito: "He's got a really good feel for space."
Kyle Dixon: "I've been very appreciative of them and just how much they've been willing to help."
Kyle's pitching days are in the past. Sure, it got brought up briefly in a positional meeting earlier on in the year, but for now, Kyle is focused on the gridiron. He's still got that pitcher mentality — don't worry about the last pitch you threw, but lock in on your next opportunity.
Downing: "Some (things), it's the first time he's ever been asked to do any of this, and so there has to be some grace and understanding that there's going to be some maturing and maybe some baby deer reps out there."
Monica Dixon: "We all agree if he would've chosen football from the beginning, we don't think he would have found this success. ... It makes our hearts happy that he finally is seeing the rewards for all the work he has put in."
Rhodes: "It's definitely a unique situation. Doesn't surprise me, but a unique situation."
Borgini: "A true success story is what he is."
Sheetinger: "We used to say this all the time with our transfers. The twisted path can be the perfect path. If you land where you're supposed to be, those peaks, valleys, twists and turns were all part of the plan."
Kyle Dixon: "You just gotta embrace it. This is what I'm doing, this is my path and it is what it is. That message just kind of rang true."
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