"Man, I promise you, bro, like you see that play right there?" Ridley says as we watch a highlight of him catching a touchdown in high school for the Florida Fire 7-on-7 team. "We would run that play [on the] first play of every game in 7-on-7, and we were scoring right just like that."

Ridley was around eight years old when he began playing football for the Fort Lauderdale Jaguars. In a league laden with future pros including Lamar Jackson, and Marquise "Hollywood" Brown, Ridley was not yet a dominant route runner, but he still shined – as a running back.

"I was a fast kid," he says, "they just gave me the ball, and I ran."

The speed – and all of his athletic abilities, for that matter – Ridley credits to his mother, Kay Daniels, who was a star in the 100m and 200m dash at Fort Lauderdale High School. He remembers how Daniels would push Ridley and his brothers at their track meets and other competitions, almost even embarrassing at times for them.

It was not until he began at Monarch High School in Coconut Creek, Florida, that Ridley began developing into the route runner he is today. He would watch YouTube videos of Amari Cooper, Julio Jones, and Antonio Brown, then head straight to Sabal Pines and try to recreate their moves with his own flavor.

Ridley spent most of his days training at Sabal Pines with many of the best players in the area. Some of his favorite memories at the field were during the summers, when college players would join them. They would form teams of five to seven and play tournament-style games until dark.

"If you can make plays there, you can make plays anywhere, for sure," Ridley says about the park, "We had a lot of talent out there."

Ridley was the kind of player that most athletes dream of being in high school. He was the nation's No.1 recruit, per 24/7Sports composite rankings, with offers from Power Five programs across the country. During his senior season, Ridley had 41 catches for 1,131 yards and 12 touchdowns, per the Sun-Sentinel, so getting open was not much of a problem.

"It was pretty easy in high school," he tells me with a shrug.

That quickly changed when he got to Alabama.

Ridley is wearing an Alabama white long sleeve dri-fit with black shorts and slides during our film session at Falcons headquarters, but it is as if he has his helmet, gloves, and cleats on and is back at Alabama as he takes me through some of his best college routes. He's at the edge of his seat. Moving his hands, his head, even making grunting noises with each of his cuts on the screen. His favorite route of the 52-second montage comes from a game against Mississippi State in 2017. Ridley says he was running what Alabama called a "spin" route. The purpose of the route against Mississippi State's zone coverage is to get the linebacker to over-commit to Ridley's route.

"The corner actually takes it!" a surprised Ridley says, laughing as he watches himself confuse the Bulldog defense. "I ran this play earlier, and I didn't get it, and I felt the safety driving on me, so I told myself the next time I get it, Ima cut back on them."

Ridley caught the ball at the 45-yard line, planted his left foot, cut in the opposite direction, and left the Bulldog safety behind him. He took the pass 65-yards before being forced out of bounds.

"Yeah, that's exactly what Slide Rid is right there," Ridley says. "That's exactly what that mean. I made I made a guy miss and took it up the sideline. That's slide."

Ridley earned the nickname V8 in high school – like the eight-cylinder engine – because he wore the number 8 and his explosiveness after the catch. Soon though, he outgrew the moniker. Friends began screaming "Slide Rid" when he broke away from defenses to score touchdowns, and the new nickname stuck. Today Ridley even has a gold chain that reads "Slidee Riddd."

When he got to Alabama, it became more challenging for Ridley to create space and "slide" as easily as he did in high school. Ridley learned to study film more as he faced top cornerbacks of the SEC and around the nation. He began looking for different things in defensive backs, from their leverage to how they used their hands and feet. Still, his biggest challenge came each day at practice, facing teammates Marlon Humphrey, Cyrus Jones, and other future NFL defensive backs.

"I had to really bring it every day," Ridley said. "Practice helped the game be really easy in college. I'm getting jammed up going against hard press corners every down, man it was just tough."

Ridley grew close with Keary Colbert, then-assistant wide receivers coach at Alabama. Each week they would watch film together on cornerbacks across the country. Colbert, who played six seasons in the NFL, calls Ridley a "route technician" and one of the most gifted receivers he has ever seen.

"To this day, I still show his routes to my receivers that I'm coaching," said Colbert, now wide receivers coach at the University of Southern California. "For young receivers, he's a dude you definitely want to watch and study. He had an ability to really sell his route, then all of a sudden stick his foot in the ground and make a defensive back go in the opposite direction."

Colbert wasn't the only coach that Ridley made a lasting impact on.

Mike Locksley, who was offensive coordinator and wide receivers coach at Alabama during Ridley's time, still remembers a play Ridley made against Florida State in 2017.

"He beat the guy so bad that it was such a wide-open throw," said Locksley, now head coach at the University of Maryland. "His ability to get in and out of breaks at full speed — most guys have to slow down — but he just had this ability to drop his weight, not waste motion and get in and out of cuts really clean."

To this day, Locksley uses Ridley as the standard of a great college receiver, and he holds his receivers to that level.

"His routes were almost artistic," Locksley said. "He has this innate ability to, if he's running a post, make you believe he's going to run a corner route. I've always been impressed with him as a route runner."

"It's not a science. It's a art," Ridley told reporters that during a training camp press conference in August when asked about his route running.

"That's just how I put it in my head, you gotta be creative," Ridley tells me. "You gotta know angles, you gotta see his legs, you gotta see his feet, 'He moved? Okay, I got him now.' Like you gotta know when to move and know when to do stuff."

The question came after he sent Twitter into a frenzy when the Falcons went to Miami for joint practices with the Dolphins. Ridley ran a route that left All-Pro cornerback Byron Jones facing the opposite direction. Video of the route racked up over two million views on Twitter and started a discussion about routes and 1-on-1 drills. Many criticized Ridley's route for being too long to ever execute in a real game, but Ridley says he has run a variation of the route in the red zone of almost every game he plays.

As we watched clips of some of his best routes, Ridley spotted him running a version of the Miami Route against the Dallas Cowboys last season.

"Look at his eyes," Ridley says as he takes me through the route, "now I know I got him because he's not even looking!"

The difference between that route and the Miami one was that he lined up further inside, and he "C Ridzed" the route a bit differently. The phrase "C Ridz" or "C Ridzing it" is a phrase that Falcons wide receivers coach Dave Brock created during Ridley's rookie season. It essentially is a route where Ridley takes a basic concept and adds extra moves. This style is how Ridley typically approached routes in college and high school, but he quickly learned from former Falcons receivers Julio Jones, Mohamed Sanu, and Justin Hardy that he had to approach the NFL differently.

Brock still gives Ridley a heads up on which routes he can "C Ridz" and which he can't.

"When I first got here, I used to do a lot, a lot, like a lot of moving; I'm like, 'Damn y'all don't like that? What's wrong with that?" Ridley said with a smile. "I was young; I never played in that type of offense. I was just like, 'I don't get it, like why y'all don't like this?' It wasn't about that. It was about the timing. I needed to be at a spot at a certain time."

Quickly getting to spots is a technique Jones had mastered by the time Ridley got to the league. Jones quickly took Ridley under his wing and taught him the importance of speed routes. Even when Jones was not explicitly giving Ridley directions, Ridley learned by Jones' example.

"He's one of the greatest, so I always had my eyes locked on him," Ridley said. "Just the way he did things and just the way he carried himself, his confidence you know, it was easy to watch him."

Ridley lets out another contagious, high-pitched laugh as the last video appears on the television. It's Ridley after the Falcons selected him with the 26th pick in 2018. He is wearing a red Falcons hat, braces and a navy blue suit.

"I'm a route runner. I can catch the ball and get Y.A.C [yards after catch]," he says in the video. "I can get in and out of my breaks real good. I get open real well. I can run any route from any position – and I could just get the job done."

"Fasho, yessir," Ridley is saying while laughing as the video wraps up, impressed with how he handled the interview. "If I could give young C Rid advice, hmm." Ridley stops and pauses, folds his hands, and looks up and down for a few seconds, "Just keep the confidence, continue to work hard, and make yourself happy."

Four years later, the bold draftee has backed up his talk, becoming one of the NFL's best wide receivers and route runners. In year four, he is helping Kyle Pitts, Russell Gage, and other receivers in the same way that Jones, Sanu, and Hardy helped him.

Gage often studies Ridley's technique at practice and even in games, just like Ridley used to do with Jones. Gage tries to add pieces of Ridley's approach to his game, but some of Ridley's moves are impossible to recreate.

"There's things that I see where I'm just like, 'You're different right there; I can't do that,'" Gage said with a laugh. "Calvin can be at a 100 then at zero – right now. You can practice that all you want – you can get better at it – but you can't be as good as he is at stopping on a dime like that."

Still, in trying to recreate Ridley's moves, Gage has evolved as a route runner, though he may not be as sharp as Ridley.

"I've tried," Gage said. "I just for sure can tell there's still a difference when he does it and when I do it."

And Ridley's innate ability to change speeds while running precise routes is what makes him unique – it's why Brock has given his routes the C Ridz nickname, and college coaches still hold his route-running as the standard for their athletes.

Five games into his first season as the Falcons wide receiver one, Ridley is off to a slow start. His 281 yards through his first five games played are the lowest of his career. As the Falcons head into the remaining eleven games, however, Ridley is less worried about his stats and looking to turn his elite route running and separation skills into wins.

"It doesn't feel good to not be not winning or playing in the playoffs at the end of the season," he said. "Just going home – it just sucks. You know, watching football is still going, and we at home just watching it. That feeling sucks."