"Sneaky thing, life. At the smallest of moments, it can make the biggest of changes.

For instance, there was the backup linebacker playing catch before the start of practice. There was the head coach who happened to walk past at just the right moment. There was the click of an idea as the coach glanced in the right direction at the right time at the right linebacker.

If not for any of it, who knows where Dallas Clark might be today?

These days, he is an unexpected star in the middle of an unlikely success story. Clark is one of the new hybrid tight ends, one of those versatile athletes who leaves defensive coordinators muttering to themselves as they try to figure out how to stop him.

This year, Clark caught 100 passes — the second most in NFL history by a tight end — and reached his first Pro Bowl. It was as if opposing defenses, like the league itself, never saw him coming.

When you think about it, how could they?

Go back to 2000, when Clark was a walk-on at Iowa and seemed to be on his way to a perfectly ordinary career. He was going to be a linebacker, he thought. He was going to be like big brother Derrik, who played at Iowa State. He was going to play some college ball, make a few tackles, then go about his life.

Instead, he decided to play a little catch with his roommate.

Because of it, he became a star.

To be honest, Clark wasn't a very good linebacker. In high school, where he merely played tackle-the-runner football, it had been a snap. But in college, there were coverages to absorb and techniques to learn, and Clark was slow to read oncoming plays."