February 25, 2025
By Evan Lepler
When the e-mail arrived with the subject line that included the words “Former NFL Wide Receiver,” Colorado Summit Head CoachTim Kefalas was super skeptical.
“I’ve had a few semi pro athletes—folks that play in mid-tier football leagues that I’ve never heard of—reach out [in the past] and those never panned out,” said Kefalas, who’s entering his fourth season as lead signal caller of the Summit. “So I had pretty low expectations.”
But after several friendly and productive conversations over the past couple weeks, Rodney Adams, a record-setting collegiate receiver who was drafted by the Minnesota Vikings in 2017, became the first player with NFL experience to sign a contract to play in the Ultimate Frisbee Association.
Adams was on the roster/practice squad with four different NFL franchises during his five seasons in the league. He only appeared in one regular season game, as a member of the Chicago Bears on December 5, 2021, but he memorably caught a 73-yard touchdown from Andy Dalton in a preseason contest on August 21, 2021, just one day after the birth of his first daughter. He also caught 135 passes for 1,967 yards and scored a couple dozen touchdowns in his three years playing college football for the South Florida Bulls from 2014-16, prior to being selected with the 170th overall pick in the 2017 NFL Draft.
Now 30 years old and a father of two—with a third on the way—the former fifth round pick is ready to tackle a new challenge: professional ultimate frisbee.
How and why did Adams decide to try the UFA? It all began when he was unassumingly scrolling through Instagram and came across some highlights.
“I just saw a bunch of people running, jumping, catching frisbees, and thought, that’s kinda like football,” said Adams, who added that he had no idea how ultimate clips ended up in his Instagram feed.
He then searched to see if Colorado, where he now resides with his wife and children, had a team. When he discovered the Summit, he decided to reach out.
“It was just me being a competitor,” said Adams. “That competitive itch, it never leaves.”
As he learned more, he also began to understand that transitioning to ultimate would not necessarily be easy and seamless.
“I didn’t know that it was this competitive, talking about ultimate frisbee,” said Adams. “This thing is uber-competitive.”
After he initially made contact with Kefalas on February 11, the two of them got together and watched the 2023 interdivisional battle between Colorado and New York, during which Adams started to study the basics of ultimate.
“He’s literally never played,” said Kefalas. “So we’re talking through stalls and basic offensive structure and the absolute core building blocks.”
Gradually, as Adams’ enthusiasm only grew, TK’s initial skepticism waned. Following one final candid chat to ensure that all expectations were aligned, the Summit offered Adams a base contract.
This past Friday, Adams attended a small pod workout with several members of the Summit. Although his throws were definitely raw, he also showcased some of the exceptional athleticism you would expect from an NFL wideout who stands 6’1” and ran a 4.4 40-yard dash at the combine.
On the opening point of a little two-on-two scrimmage, someone threw up a ‘moon ball’ to see what Adams would do, and he proceeded to sky over his decorated Summit teammate, Quinn Finer, who happens to be a member of the US Men’s National Team, "like it was the most natural thing he’s done."
“He was a speed receiver, a kick return specialist, so he’s fast for a football player,” said Kefalas. “Straight line speed, he’s clearly the fastest person on the [Summit], and it’s not gonna be particularly close.”
While everyone with the Summit has been impressed by Adams’ initial skill acquisition and growth curve, they also are trying to remain realistic considering the guy has still never played a single point of seven-on-seven ultimate.
Asked if he was confident that he’d be able to contribute to the team right away, Adams acknowledged that he’s still uncertain, but eager to learn, try, and see what he can become.
“If I’m being completely honest, I have no clue because I haven’t played in a live game to understand the movements,” said Adams. “Me being a wide receiver, I just got that little box, it’s just you and me; like, we’re about to dance in the box, and I’m gonna beat you. In ultimate frisbee, you have the whole field, it is insane how much you have to cover.
“I was talking to Quinn and he was saying how, ‘you’re gonna get beat a lot of the time just because it’s hard to just stick to a man the whole game. You’re gonna get beat, it’s part of ultimate frisbee.’ But I told him I’m too competitive for that. I’m not gonna let anyone beat me.”
Amidst this confidence—and just to be clear, he was laughing as he said that last sentence—Adams added that he was blown away by the endurance required for ultimate frisbee.
“I’m used to short spurts, not this long distance stuff,” he said. “I run five yards and then it’s back to the huddle.”
Not in ultimate, where points can last multiple minutes and require players to sprint hundreds of yards trying to get open or chasing someone on D. Add in the disc skill dynamic, field sense, decision-making, and all the other intricacies involved in professional ultimate, and it’s quickly clear that phenomenal frisbee is about a lot more than just athleticism.
Just ask Jakeem Polk, who was a D-II college football player for Wingate University in North Carolina before trying out for the UFA back in 2016. Polk immediately wowed everyone with his speed and vertical leap, but needed several months before he found his comfort zone on the frisbee field.
“The most challenging thing for me when I started playing ultimate was definitely throwing and the flow of the game was way different than football,” said Polk, who’s poised for his 10th UFA season—and fifth with the Atlanta Hustle—in 2025. “Literally lost 20 pounds and changed my whole workout program to be in shape for frisbee. It took me about two months to feel comfortable on the field, even though I was limited with my throws. But [I] also was a fresh out of college defensive back, so locking players up was my strength. Plus, having more elite athleticism to make plays in the air made the transition a lot easier. It took me two years to feel super comfortable with the disc, but I was always confident even though I was limited with ultimate IQ and skills. One of the coaches during the Charlotte Express tryouts said, ‘we can’t teach athleticism, but we can teach skills,’ So, I developed this passion and love for the game which is why I’m still playing today.”
During his decade in the league, Polk has both created many highlight-reel moments and developed into a super solid all-around player for one of the top teams in the league. Considering Adams’ football resume, setting school records at USF and getting selected in the NFL draft, it feels like the sky’s the limit if he can stumble upon the same type of passion that propelled Polk.
As for his crash course in all the details that go into individual skill development and strategic team success, Adams has been determined to digest as much information as he possibly can.
“I told him, literally the first time we went out together,” Kefalas explained, “I said, I’ve got a million different things I could talk all day about because my brain just goes a mile a minute and I drink too much coffee, but want to make sure that it’s all digestible. [Adams] responded, ‘I had to memorize 70-page playbooks every two weeks. Lay it all on me.’"
“In two weeks, we’re not going into nuanced zone positional marking shifts, but we’ve talked about hip positioning, cutting patterns, defensive strategies, what kind of things you want to do when someone’s playing 10-yards off, five-yards off, three-yards off, when to cushion, when is it better to open up less cushion. All of it is qualified with, we’re giving you these baselines, but what’ll supersede any of that is you get in the moment, you understand what we’re trying to achieve in that moment, and we trust you to be able to tailor your skillset because we’re not totally sure how to scale this appropriately right now [for someone with your athleticism.]”
The Summit recently finalized their roster and will hold their first full-team minicamp weekend on March 22-23. Two months from tomorrow, Colorado opens its 2025 season at home against the Oregon Steel—formerly the Portland Nitro—on Saturday, April 26.
Time will tell whether Rodney Adams can slow down Quinn Finer, Alex Atkins, or Noah Coolman in upcoming Summit practices, not to mention the challenge of potentially matching up with some of the other top cutters around the West and the rest of the UFA. But after just one session, Finer began to believe he could definitely make a difference, sooner rather than later, in the upcoming season.
“I’m absolutely hoping he’s an impactful part of our team in April, with our first game,” said Finer. “Truly, that speaks to how quickly he’s learning and how coachable he is as a person. I do expect that, and I’m looking forward to seeing it.”
Both Kefalas and Finer also mentioned multiple times how nice of a guy Adams has been throughout every second of this experience thus far. Whereas the idea of adding a former NFL player with zero frisbee experience onto a professional ultimate team is truly uncharted waters, the Summit leaders believe that, culturally, Adams is kind of a perfect fit.
“We were walking back to his house after our first session,” said Kefalas, “and he just said, ‘give me a role, and I’ll own it.’ He seems to have a pretty good approach, and he’s willing to put in the work, whatever it’s gonna take.”
Photos provided by Tim Jackson or Daniel Warner
