Come hop on an evening flight to Houston.

Descend through the dark Texas sky, touch down at George Bush Intercontinental Airport north of the city and exit through a busy terminal. Sign for a rental car and ease into the driver’s seat. Get comfortable.

Curl right onto I-69, and snake south for 18 miles toward a bustling downtown. Then split left onto Highway 288, and allow a half hour to pass; the city lights dimming in the rearview and flat, dry, dusty earth sprawling all around. When the sign appears, exit left onto the final freeway, Highway 6 South.

Dead ahead, where faint lights flicker in the space where the sky meets the soil, lies our destination.

Welcome to Alvin, Texas, population 27,000.

Pulling into town and hanging right for the last turn, a faded red sign appears a quarter mile down the street. It hangs in front of a 139-year-old watering hole, the Gordon Street Tavern.

Inside, townsfolk occupy most of the worn wooden tables in a crowded main room. They drink cold beer and watch football on wide screens overhead. Amble to the back and grab a chair at the bar.

Sit and listen.

Months after he picked up shifts as a floor supervisor to make ends meet while pursuing his NFL dream, there is Gunner Olszewski.

“We’ve been spreading the word about how excited we are for Gunner,” says his former manager Natalie Peters. “People here talk about him all the time.”

Back on the road the compass points west, where a dark-haired freshman at New Mexico State sweats out several pounds during a padded football practice under an unforgiving southwestern sun. His upcoming regular season is the light at the end of a lifelong tunnel. Johnny Tamayo falls back on his training to push forward.

Drawing on those spring days, he finds inspiration. There is Gunner Olszewski.

“Nothing is ever going to be handed to you. That’s what he taught me,” said Tomayo who trained under Olszewski this spring. “If you want to make yourself known, you have to do that. Don’t get tired, and never give up.”

More than 1,500 miles north in Minnesota, a college football coach is conveying those exact lessons to his freshmen during a late summer team meeting. They are the only men in the room who don’t understand, who haven’t seen it first hand. It’s hard to enlighten anyone about their blindspots, let alone obstinate 18-year-olds.

So Brent Bolte, the headman at Division II Bemidji State, lets old practice film speak for him.

On the screen, a BSU alum flashes faster than the football during a recorded team period. He’s a magnet to every ball carrier, devastatingly quick and arriving with a shocking violence for his wiry 5-foot-10 frame.

This, Bolte explains, is how you cultivate success. Turning effort from obstacle to ally.

He points to the screen. There is Gunner Olszewski.

“This is what it takes to get noticed. It doesn’t matter if you’re 5-10 and play at Bemidji State,” Bolte says. “This is what you’ve got the be able to do to move on and hone your skills.”

And in a small New England town south of Boston, where the football dreams of a region rest and are realized, stands the man himself. Surrounded by reporters and TV cameras inside the Patriots’ locker room Monday, the darling of their preseason takes questions one at a time. Most are just variations of “How?”

No one expected him to be here. Yet there, in the flesh, is Gunner Olszewski.

“At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter how it happened," he says. "What happened is I’m a Patriot now.”

But of course it matters.

The lessons of his rise from Alvin to Bemidji and now Foxborough have not yet been swallowed by public image or media myth. Everything about Olszewski in this moment is preciously real. Real deserves to be shared.

The stories, the struggles, the people who admit to gravitating toward his personality and remain in his orbit all these years later.

The untold details of his journey reveal how an indomitable, undersized Texan could turn minimal high school recruiting attention into a decorated college career; how he could force two Patriots scouts to put him on Bill Belichick’s radar; how he could back Belichick, the greatest coach in NFL history, into an audible minutes before the NFL’s roster cut deadline.

And it’s how on that day he made the football world turn for a minute, look and say: Here comes Gunner Olszewski.

“That guy?”

No one forgets the first time they met Olszewski.

Robert Wilcox, the second of his head football coaches at Alvin High School, especially remembers the walk over to greet him. In the spring of 2014, Wilcox’s new assistants described a hard-hitting defensive back who could be the centerpiece of Alvin’s rebuilt defense. He could switch seamlessly between cornerback and safety, they said. He was a tone-setter, a relentless competitor.

Wilcox wanted to see him. They pointed over to a scrawny junior who looked like he could be blown over by a stiff wind. Wilcox’s face scrunched up.

“That guy?”

The following season, that guy forced six fumbles, returned three punts for touchdowns and set the school record for career tackles with 270. Olszewski earned his second All-District honor ahead of players ticketed for FBS programs on full scholarships. The staff worked overtime imploring hundreds of colleges to offer their undersized safety, a baton they’d taken from Wilcox’s predecessor, Trey Herrmann.

Both coaches understood recruiters would dismiss Olszewski on measurements alone. He cleared 5-9 and 150 pounds on good days. On bad days, schools’ interest would visibly dry up upon meeting him.

So Herrmann and Wilcox played up his intangibles, explaining Olszewski grasped the defense better than anyone and set an elite example for his teammates.

“When someone made a mistake, he let them know about it," Herrmann said. “And if he made a mistake, he would let me know before I could even tell him."

But until Bemidji State came calling, it hardly mattered.

“I can’t tell you how many college coaches I told, ‘You’re making a mistake,’” Wilcox said.

If genetics were Olszewski’s greatest barrier to a fulfilled recruitment, his desire to play two sports ranked a close second. Olszewski was adamant about it, and rightfully so. Two years before his baseball career ended with a broken hand and whispers of NFL interest in spring 2018, Olszewki hit .327 as a freshman catcher at Bemidji State.

Bolte’s willingness to share Olzewski with the school’s baseball program helped secure his commitment. That and an unusual official visit.

In true Olszewski form, he flew to Minnesota sporting torn jeans, cowboy boots and a worn white tank top. The only Texas cliche’ he’d left at home was the burnt orange and white Chevy Blazer he drove to and from school.

“He didn’t look like much," Bolte recalled. "He had a baseball cap on and his little southern drawl, but there was just something about him. He’s got a great personality, very charismatic. People are drawn to him.”

Luckily for Bolte, Olszewski felt drawn to Bemidji. It was a familial homecoming of sorts. His grandfather was a native Minnesotan, and the campus lay hours from where his older brother, EJ, played college football in Nebraska. Not to mention the area’s love of the outdoors.

“First thing he told me after the visit was, ‘Coach, man, I got to ice fish. And I loved it!’" Wilcox said with a laugh. "And a kid from Houston going ice fishing, that’s a little different.”

Bemidji’s best

Late in the spring of 2016, Bemidji State baseball coach Tim Bellew found himself in a pickle.

He’d set his ball cap down to coordinate concessions during a state high school baseball tournament on campus. Up against an unexpectedly large crowd with food and drink disappearing, Bellew turned to his catcher for assistance.

Olszewski had been keeping score for the tournament. Now Bellew needed him to keep the concessions running. So the coach tossed Olszewski his keys and gave him an order: “Take my truck, run to Walmart, fill a cart and bring it back.”

As if stealing second, Olszewski took off. Less than 30 minutes later, he rounded the stand’s corner with a cart packed with popcorn, candy, hot dogs and assorted beverages. Stunned, Bellew couldn’t fathom how Olszewski knew about the carts they kept in the basement of the facility. He’d forgotten to tell him.

Then Bellew spotted the inscription on the side of Olszewski’s new ride: “WALMART”

“Gunner, what did you do?!” Bellew exclaimed. “They have cameras in the parking lot!”

“No, sir,” he said in a calm Texas drawl. “I looked around first."

"Yes, but when you entered and left they got my license plate.”

Olszewski paused. A mischievous smile crept across his face.

“Well if you go to jail, coach, I’ll come visit you.”

More than three years later, the story remains a favorite among all of Olszewski’s Bemidji State coaches.

To them, tales like the stolen cart illustrate as much about him as his accolades do. Those are as follows: Division II All-American cornerback, 2018 Defensive Player of the Year in the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference, several all-conference honors on defense and special teams, countless Player of the Week awards and becoming the all-time leader in tackles for a corner.

Perhaps most impressively, Olszewski shelved the coaches’ plan to redshirt him as a freshman weighing less than 150 pounds after he’d recovered from shingles just weeks earlier. It took all of one practice for an upperclassmen to approach Bolte and predict Olszewski’s eventual All-America honor. By season’s end, Olszewski led the team with seven interceptions, made the all-conference first team and was named Newcomer of the Year.

He even stepped in as an emergency holder in his second collegiate game — with no prior experience.

“Really, it became a no-brainer,” Bolte said of playing Olszewski. “He was so damn good.”

Bolte never could keep him off the field. Neither could Bellew — not even when the emergency room beckoned during his freshman season.

Midway through a three-game series at Oklahoma City University, the tireless Texan tapped a grounder to first base and flew down the line to force a close play. The pitcher, a hulking 6-foot-6 hurler, lumbered over to cover the bag while Olszewski shot forward in a head-first dive. The pitcher’s right cleat sank straight into his left forearm.

Blood gushed instantly.

An Oklahoma City assistant coach and trainer whisked Olszewski into the dugout for treatment. Every OCU player put a dugout’s worth of distance between himself and the visitor’s grisly wound.

“They couldn’t look at his arm,” Bellew said. “Their assistant and trainer were there working on him, and before I could walk over he starts yelling at me, ‘Skip, do not take me out! Do not take me out!’”

From his position in the third-base coach’s box, Bellew waited for word from the trainer, who either on her own volition or at Olszewski’s behest, decided to clear him. Olszewski returned to play, the game finished and the attending OCU assistant stopped Bellew before his team retreated onto its bus.

“He told me, 'That’s the kind of kid that comes around once every 25 to 30 years. Enjoy him.”

In the meantime, Olszewski and two Bemidji State coaches enjoyed a midnight trip to the emergency room. His sliced arm required a dozen stitches.

Two and a half years later, when Olszewski informed Bellew he was hanging up his bat and glove for good, no amount of stitches could sew up the old coach’s wound. But he understood. Olszewski had chosen football.

No more sessions in the batting cages behind Bolte’s back in the fall or sneaking off to run football drills when Bellew wasn’t looking in the spring. It would be all football all the time.

"He's relentless in what he does," Bellew said. "Once he starts on something, there's no turning that off."

Months after Olszewski bid Bemidji goodbye to train for the NFL full time, the school completed wholesale renovations inside its football offices. The finishing touch belonged to Al Wolden, the first player in program history to reach the NFL and a member of the BSU Athletics Hall of Fame. Wolden, 56, played three games with the Bears and lives in town with his wife and two sons.

Walking back from a prominent wall inside the facility, Wolden stopped to admire his work. He smiled. Then Wolden stepped forward and had his picture taken next to the new mural depicting the greatest player in Bemidji State football history.

It was Olszewski.

Preparation and Pro Day

Tipping the scale at 168 pounds, his face sunken and shoulder sinking from a midseason separation is how Olszewski met Jaxson Appel at Appel’s athletic performance center in Houston on Dec. 10.

“My first impression was like, ‘Man, this guy ... we’ve got a lot of work to do,'" Appel remembered. “He was just so beat up from the season."

Olszewski agreed to train with Appel after he had prepared Bo Olszewski, Gunner’s younger brother, for high school football. A star safety at Texas A&M in the early 2000s, Appel had a cup of coffee with the Tennessee Titans in 2005 before founding his center 10 years later. Together, they trained 81 times through the end of June.

Typically, Appel eases clients into their custom-designed speed and agility programs. But Olszewski, as he always has been, became an exception.

Appel agreed to pack Olszewski’s training schedule into the six weeks left before his college all-star game appearance in late January. The problem was that timeline put Olszewski behind from Day 1. To make up for lost time, his first workout was ripped from Appel’s Day 10 playbook.

“This is going to be uncomfortable for you," Appel told Olszewki flatly. "And he told me, ‘Let’s get it.’”

In Appel’s words, he “buried” the 22-year-old under a series of rigorous physical tests and drills. No mercy. But Olszewski resurfaced after every workout, eager for more.

Have you bought your 2019 Patriots tickets yet? Shop here for the best deals on tickets: StubHub, SeatGeek, Ticketmaster

“It takes a very special type of physiology and anatomy to be able to respond from that," Appel said. "And Gunner is that special type of guy.”

Still bothered by his separated shoulder, Olszewski played in the all-star game, returned home and centered his training around Pro Day-specific drills. He hadn’t heard from Bolte yet whether he would perform for scouts at the University of Minnesota’s Pro Day in late March or the lesser-attended Division II showcase the following day. Olszewski wouldn’t hear for almost two months.

While he continued grinding with Appel, Olszewski called in a favor from a high school friend who worked at the Gordon Street Tavern. He wanted to work more, pocket a little extra cash.

Olszewski’s interview went so well management agreed to work around his training schedule. In return, he served food, lent a hand in the kitchen and behind the bar and wherever else his manager required him.

“It never daunted him. In this industry, a keg will blow and you’ve got to run food and still have a smile on your face with customer service," Peters said. "He just did everything with ease.”

But after a month, the nonstop nature of his days caught up with him. A lack of sleep wore on his workouts. Olszewski felt himself slipping and needed to re-stabilize with a new routine.

Reading the same fatigue, Appel offered Olszewski a paying gig at his gym to replace the restaurant shifts. He’d train in the morning, shower, eat and work with younger clients before heading home for second and third helpings of chicken and mom’s lasagna to add weight and then fall fast asleep.

Within a week, Appel discovered what all of Olszewski’s previous teachers had learned over the years: You only have to tell him once.

“He ran groups, he ran classes. Any time I would teach him something, he would turn around and regurgitate exactly what I’d said to the athletes," Appel said. "A lot of the kids at my gym really look up to him as an athlete and even more so because they got to know him as a person and what a genuine guy he is.”

Added Tamayo: “He was always easy to talk to. He was open about what our mistakes were, what we did well and what we could improve on.”

No one loved Olszewski more than the 8 and 9-year-olds. Every session, he greeted them with a genuine joy. And every so often he danced for them, bouncing about the gym spurred on by the sounds of their laughter, a smile spread wide across his face.

As the calendar turned to March, Bolte found smiling more difficult. He’d pressed Minnesota’s staff to formally invite Olszewski and BSU’s other top prospects to their Pro Day for weeks. Welcoming local small-school prospects to these events is a common courtesy expected of FBS programs across the country.

Yet the Gophers refused him. Bolte had his suspicions why.

The year before, a Bemidji State offensive lineman, Jake Krause, outran and out-lifted every Gophers lineman at their Pro Day, which triggered a mini meltdown from head coach P.J. Fleck. Bolte believed Minnesota was barring all Division II prospects to avoid a repeat embarrassment. Despite the troubling uncertainty he had caused, Olszewski couldn’t fault Krause.

He was indebted to him.

Krause’s emergence had been instrumental to Olszewski’s discovery. The scouts who visited campus in 2018 to study the Krause’s tape were inevitably drawn to the electric junior cornerback/punt returner. Sometimes scouting is a happy accident.

Said Bolte: “I really don’t know if Olszewski would’ve gotten noticed unless Jake Krause had gotten all the scouts from the NFL and everyone else coming through."

According to Bolte, former Buccaneers scout Pat Perles, who today serves as an analyst at the University of Michigan, was the first to seriously inquire about Olszewski. Soon enough, most teams were sending curious scouts through Bemidji.

“It felt like every day there was a different scout there watching somebody, which is not typical at all for us,” Bolte said.

Like Perles, most traveled for Olszewski. But unless Minnesota’s staff relented in time for Pro Day, only a few would study Olszewski in person.

At last, with hours to spare before their Pro Day, the Gophers changed their minds. Minnesota formally extended invites to Olszewski and Bemidji State safety John Vogeler. Bolte suspects either Olszewski’s agent or several vocal scouts applied enough pressure to get his players through the door.

But it didn’t matter. His star defensive backs finally had an NFL audience.

On March 27, Olszewski ran in the mid 4.5s during the 40-yard dash and leapt 36 inches in the vertical leap, competitive marks for most any NFL prospect regardless of position. A longtime Bears scout called Bolte to say Olszewski had done well. The coach thought Chicago might move on him.

Later, the Vikings invited Olszewski to their rookie minicamp in May. It was strange. They’d paid less attention to Olzewski and BSU’s prospects than in years past.

“I think they dropped the ball there,” he said.

And as the draft process closed, outside interest began to fade all together. Bolte found himself confronted by the same quandary he’d bailed Wilcox out of years earlier.

How do you sell an undersized defensive back with an outsized heart to the next level?

Soon enough, his phone buzzed to life.

“Coach, this is the New England Patriots.”

A football fairy tale

An hour before the Houston Texans kicked off their second preseason game in mid-August, Appel and his wife sat in NRG Stadium watching the game they most wanted to see but hadn’t come to catch.

The Patriots and Titans were already underway in Nashville. The couple’s eyes climbed the screen searching for No. 9 in white. The Patriots had received the opening kick, so this should be easy.

A-ha! There he was.

There was Olszewski, starting at wide receiver for New England. At that moment, Appel turned to his wife and proclaimed: “Gunner’s gonna make the team."

Starting reps in the second week were a positive sign for his 53-man roster odds no doubt, but it was a series of injuries that propelled Olszewski to a place of preseason prominence. With Phillip Dorsett and Maurice Harris sidelined, Tom Brady threw to Olszewski several times during joint practices in Tennessee, where he made a fan out of Titans cornerback Malcolm Butler. Butler had no idea seven months earlier they played the same position.

For that change, Olszewski owed Patriots scouts Tim Heffelfinger and Steve Cargile.

According to a source, both scouts attended Minnesota’s Pro Day and approached him about transitioning to wide receiver. His lateral quickness had stirred their imaginations. No other team suggested trying another position.

The two confirmed with Bolte and Bemidji State defensive backs coach Rich Jahner that Olszewski would be a character fit in New England. They brought his name back to Belichick and the front office.

After flying back to Houston, Olszewski upended his training regimen again. He asked Appel to redesign every aspect of his workouts so he could become a wide receiver.

Not two months later, his cuts were sharp and routes passable at New England’s rookie minicamp. It still took a week and the unexpected retirement of swing tackle Jared Veldheer to earn a contract offer over the phone. The Patriots gave him an hour to stop digging the ditch he was working in, catch a flight and sign the deal.

A week before he started at Tennessee, Olszewski logged a quiet NFL debut on Aug. 8 — if you don’t count the running back carry. New England’s staff sprung the wrinkle on him seconds before sending into the backfield for a new drive midway through the third quarter. He took a toss left for 7 yards, and later caught his first pass for 13.

Against both the Titans and Panthers, Olszewski made one catch and saw increased time on special teams. His 28-yard punt return versus Carolina ranked among the game’s top highlights. In the Pats’ preseason finale, he flashed in all three phases with a 29-yard reception, 35-yard kick return and several defensive series at cornerback.

His steady improvement sparked questions about whether his odds of making the roster now exceeded players like 2018 sixth-round pick Braxton Berrios, a lifelong receiver and returner.

New England answered those questions by making Berrios one of its first cuts Saturday. For a time, Olszewski sat with him on the league’s curb. The Patriots called shortly before noon to inform him he would be released.

Thanks for the time, the training, the transition. Best of luck.

Then, with less than 15 minutes until the NFL’s deadline, they called back. He was staying put.

New England had filed a deadline deal with the Texans, trading second-year cornerback Keion Crossen in exchange for a sixth-round pick. Crossen’s exit was a disguised entryway for Olszewski. An unprecedented move by Belichick, as cold and calculating an evaluator in the league.

In Bemidji, the wildfire of good news spread when a program booster texted Jahner during a staff meeting. Jahner flipped his phone around in disbelief. The coaches celebrated together, and their celebration grew.

“The players all came back down,” Bolte said. "It was a really special moment.”

Down in Alvin, the joy Olszewski’s achievement sparked was no different.

“Everybody in our program knew,” Wilcox said. “All the kids know who Gunner is."

And now those Texans know what he’s become: a living testament to grit and an undying dream. The NFL’s unlikeliest underdog. An embodiment of what could be.

“He has the ability to give hope and inspiration to kids that otherwise might not have it. Because scouts get it wrong. Coaches get it wrong," Appel said. “You can realize your dreams going from zero D-1 offers to playing at Bemidji to playing for the Super Bowl champs.”

On Sunday night, from the Gordon Street Tavern to Bemidji State and across the country, Olszewski’s story will be broadcast during New England’s primetime season opener against the Steelers. Comparisons and clichés will fly, inspiring short-lived senses of connection and surprise. Those closest to Olszewski, however, contend they were never surprised.

Nothing shocks them anymore.

In the eight years before his NFL breakthrough, Olszewski routinely stiff-armed expectations. He crowbarred his way out of convention. He damned destiny.

He defied fate.

Said Bolte: “It’s really nothing short of a fairytale.”