The evolution of Larry Fitzgerald: Anquan Boldin, Fitz identify HOFer’s greatest skill

Larry Fitzgerald will go down as one of the greatest receivers in Arizona Cardinals franchise history, but what made him so great?

Both Fitzgerald and longtime teammate Anquan Boldin stopped by Arizona Sports’ Wolf & Luke Thursday, and if you ask them, it was the Cardinals’ legend’s ability to win 50/50 balls.

“Obviously, my hands and body control, I think, were my hallmarks, like the things that I did naturally very well,” Fitzgerald said

“You can just throw the ball up, and for (Larry Fitzgerald) it’s not a 50-50 ball, it’s more like an 80-20,” Boldin said. “The way that he caught the ball, it’s a skill set that a lot of people don’t have.”

Boldin compared Fitzgerald’s ability to track the ball to a basketball player boxing guys out.

“He makes it look so easy and so effortless that people don’t really understand like it’s the true art,” Boldin continued. “Like to see him go up and out-muscle a DB or jump over somebody’s head, or to track a ball over his left shoulder.

“I mean, it’s truly a work of art, and people don’t understand the amount of work that goes into that.”

The three-time Pro Bowler, who spent the first seven years of his career in Arizona, alongside Fitzgerald for six of those seasons, said the Hall of Famer just had a “knack” for coming down with the ball regardless of the circumstance.

Unlike most receivers, who would try to rise to the ball, allowing the defender back into the play, Fitzgerald was comfortable letting the ball drift over his shoulder to make himself open.

“Fitz is a different talent,” Boldin said. “That doesn’t just happen on Sundays.”

How did Larry Fitzgerald’s game evolve?

While Fitzgerald could catch the ball over anyone you matched him up against, there was a different part of his game that he was most proud of.

“I was really proud that my game evolved and it got better over time,” Fitzgerald said. When I came into the league, I was an athletic, linear player who can high-point balls and do things like that. But as I got later in my career … I had to change the way I played.”

Part of that change was Fitzgerald’s improvement in yards after catch. Boldin said after the Cardinals legend had been a Pro Bowler and established himself as one of the best receivers in the league, he asked Boldin what he could do to make his game even better.

“I just told him yards after the catch. At that time, I didn’t feel like he had any holes in his game,” Boldin said. “But I did feel like if he added this, he would be unstoppable. When I told him that, he went to work on it and I begin to see him … take pride in getting yards after the catch.”

Boldin added that yards after the catch was something Fitzgerald took into the latter part of his career and flourished on. That showed Boldin the type of player the future Hall of Famer was.

“With all the accolades he had accomplished (and) with the kind of career that he had already established, he was still a guy not only willing to ask the questions but take the advice and implement it in this game,” Boldin said.

Fitzgerald played his entire 17-year career in Arizona, earning 11 trips to the Pro Bowl and an All-Pro honor.

He broke out in 2005 (his second year in the NFL) to the tune of 103 receptions for 1,409 yards and 10 touchdowns. That began a stretch of eight Pro Bowl nods in nine years.

Then, Fitzgerald put together three more consecutive Pro Bowl seasons from age 32 to 34, which included 200 yards across two playoff games in 2015.

“I’m really, really proud that I was able to kind of just morph into a different type of player and have the same, if not more, impact in the game later in my career.”

Fitzgerald will be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame on Aug. 8.

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