He hoisted the Lombardi Trophy high overhead as he rode down Fourth Avenue in Seattle with his fellow receivers, never thinking for a second that his time with the Seahawks was done.

And when the championship parade ended at CenturyLink Field, Golden Tate sipped from a bottle of champagne and stood on stage smiling and laughing as Seahawks coach Pete Carroll, general manager John Schneider and owner Paul Allen spoke.

For four years, Seattle was Tate’s home, the city that raised him from a “stupid rookie” to one of the most underrated playmakers in the league. And now that free agency was approaching, he didn’t want to leave.

He loved the fans and the organization and the city, and as confetti fell that day, there was no place else Tate wanted to be.

“Actually, after the Super Bowl, I was so confident I was coming back, I was showing up to the facility, just never cleaned my locker out, left all my stuff in there,” Tate told the Free Press last week. “I thought, ‘I’m going to be back. I know.’”

For most of February 2014, Tate was in and out of the Seahawks’ Renton headquarters. He hung out with the team’s equipment guys, had multiple conversations with the affable Carroll and traded text messages with Schneider “way more than I had during the season.”

The tenor of the conversations always was the same, with Carroll and Schneider telling Tate how much they appreciated him and wanted him back, and both sides vowing to make it happen.

By the time March rolled around, Tate had settled into the California beach house he was renting for the off-season. He invited his sisters for a spring-break trip that happened to coincide with free agency, never expecting he’d be making travel plans of his own.

But business is business in the NFL, and when contract talks with the Seahawks fizzled, Tate found himself suddenly boarding a flight to Detroit, where a five-year contract and a new beginning awaited.

“My emotions, I didn’t know what to feel,” Tate said. “I thought for so long, ‘I’m going to be a Seattle Seahawk the rest of my life. I’ve done everything I possibly can.’ And it didn’t work out, unfortunately. They had just paid Percy Harvin, so they had a large sum of money invested in him, and I wasn’t looking for $60 million like he was. It just didn’t work.”

Things didn’t work for Tate and the Seahawks collectively.

But separately, as Tate prepares for his return to Seattle on Monday for the Lions’ prime-time showdown with the Seahawks on Monday Night Football, no one can complain.

The Lions got what turned out to be the steal of free agency in Tate, who caught 99 passes last year to lead the team to the playoffs.

The Seahawks used the money they saved on Tate to help sign Richard Sherman and Earl Thomas to contract extensions last spring, then made their second straight trip to the Super Bowl.

Tate posted career numbers in his first season with the Lions (99 catches, 1,331 yards) and has settled in nicely to his new home.

“I’m thrilled for him,” Carroll said in a teleconference with Detroit reporters last week. “I’m thrilled for our guys. To me, he’s one of our guys. That’s just the way I look at it. Our guys watch our players that are in other places and we enjoy just seeing how they do. We don’t want them to do it against us, of course, but we love to see them have success in other places.”

Reaping benefits

Long before he was a Pro Bowl receiver, Golden Tate III dreamed about becoming exactly that.

“Ball” was the first word he spoke as a baby. As a 6- or 7-year-old, he prayed every night that he would be a professional athlete. And he spent his days growing up in Nashville, Tenn., playing football, baseball, basketball, hockey or whatever other game he could find in the neighborhood streets.

If not an athlete, Tate said he wanted to be a police officer growing up. Or a professional fisherman.

Some of his fondest memories as a youth are the Fridays he had in kindergarten and first grade, when his parents picked him up from school with a Happy Meal from McDonald’s and drove straight to Percy Priest Lake or Old Hickory Lake.

“With fishing poles hanging out of our Jeep and tackle boxes and the worms and crickets,” Tate said. “Going to catch bluegill and perch and bass and catfish, just used to love it, man. It was family time. You didn’t have cell phones then, all you had was each other.”

Tate traveled the South playing AAU baseball as a youth, with his grandmother usually in the driver’s seat and two coolers packed with sandwich meat and yogurt and Gatorade by his side.

He was drafted twice as an outfielder — in the 42nd round by the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2007 and in the 50th round by the San Francisco Giants in 2010 — but gravitated more toward football, the sport that his father, Golden Tate II, starred in at Tennessee State.

A running back in high school, Tate started two games at receiver as a freshman at Notre Dame and blossomed at the position the next two years. He left school after his 93-catch, 1,496-yard junior season, and the Seahawks made him a second-round pick in their illustrious 2010 draft class that included Russell Okung, Kam Chancellor and Thomas.

Tate played sparingly as a rookie in a move that he now says was the best thing that could have happened to his career. He knew little about running proper routes then, and less about taking care of his body and how to go about football in a professional way.

“My first season in college I only caught (six) passes, and so my second and third year were my seasons,” Tate said. “I thought I had it figured out, but little did I know. Looking back at it, you got to thank Coach Carroll, because who knows if he rushes me into that situation of being a starter or being the guy, who knows mentally (how I would have handled it). I don’t think it would have, but mentally that could have screwed me up for the rest of my career, me doubting myself.

“But because they didn’t put the pressure on me, they were patient with me, it let my learning process be natural. When I was ready, I think we all reaped the benefits of it.”

Tate led the Seahawks with 64 catches for 898 yards during their Super Bowl season of 2013, but he was largely considered a complementary player on a team that relied heavily on its defense and running game.

Beyond the money — the Lions offered “significantly” more in free agency than the Seahawks, and Tate acknowledged that “if the deal was that close in numbers, I would have stayed in Seattle” — Tate said he was attracted to the Lions in part by the chance to play alongside Calvin Johnson and Matthew Stafford on an up-and-coming team in a pass-friendly offense.

Of course, Johnson missed three games and parts of two others with ankle injuries last year, Stafford has thrown 18 interceptions in his last 20 games, and the Lions are off to an 0-3 start and have the NFL’s 27th-ranked offense.

“I’ve never been 0-3,” he said. “And I think this is the most talent we’ve had here in a long time, and this is one of the most talented teams I’ve been on in my career. And I want to win. I could have gone to one of these very, very bad teams and had nothing at all and got paid a lot of money, but I wanted to come here because I see a bright future. I see all the pieces that we need to win.”

Zero regrets

The Lions went 11-5 last year, and Tate made the Pro Bowl for the first time in his career.

But while he was in Arizona playing in the league’s annual All-Star scrimmage, his former team was across town preparing for its second straight Super Bowl.

One night, Tate went to dinner with Seahawks receiver Jermaine Kearse and some other friends, and he ran into Schneider, who was dining at the same restaurant with his wife, Traci, and Fox reporter Jay Glazer.

Tate said Schneider has told him on multiple occasions that he made a mistake letting the receiver go and still believes in him as a player, but that didn’t make watching his former team in the Super Bowl any easier.

“There was definitely envy,” Tate said. “I’m extremely happy here and I have zero regrets at all, but you can’t tell me, just like I’m here now, I very easily could have been back on that team playing in another Super Bowl. I could have. But it is what it is. That’s what life is. It’s choices you make.

“I don’t look back. I’m still excited about where I am and love where I am and the long-term future of this organization. But you can’t help but to be like, ‘Damn.’”

Last week, Tate made headlines by saying on his weekly radio show on WMGC-FM (105.1) that opposing defensive players have told him after every game this year they knew what plays the Lions were calling.

Many took those comments as a shot at offensive coordinator Joe Lombardi, but Tate said that wasn’t the case. He said he still believes in Lombardi and the offense.

“I think we all just need to be a little bit better,” he said.

That starts Monday night in Seattle, where the Lions will try to turn their season around against one of the best defenses in the NFL.

Chancellor and Thomas, Tate’s draftmates from 2010, still are patrolling the Seahawks’ secondary, and Sherman is so good that he usually shuts down whatever receiver he’s covering.

Tate said he and Sherman used to have epic battles in practice, and he’s ready for those memories and others to flood back when he steps on CenturyLink Field.

“I’m going to try my best to keep my emotions under wraps and use my emotions to help our team, not draw negative attention, or any more negative publicity,” Tate said.

Coach Jim Caldwell said he’s not worried about that with Tate, who teammates describe as the ultimate competitor.

“There’s emotion there. It brings back memories. So these guys are human. They’re not inhuman. They’re not robots,” Caldwell said. “So they do feel it and they do sense it, but I think they’re pros, too. And so I do think that they can manage and they can handle the stress and the excitement and all of those things that kind of go along with it.”

Tate, second on the Lions with 15 catches for 161 yards, is plenty excited for Monday night’s game. But there’s no stress or nervousness. At 0-3 and with a chance to help save the Lions’ season, there’s no time for that.

“Obviously, I want to win this game, and I tried not to worry about this game until the week got here,” Tate said. “But you can’t help but to think, ‘It’s my old team, man. Guys who drafted me, everyone who helped me get to here.’ This is a chance for me to go out there in that stadium and handle business. That’ll be great for us to do.”

In modern media, “the full story” is a bit of an industry unicorn. Thanks to social media outlets like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, the never-ending hunger for 24/7/365 news coverage, and the increasing salaciousness of journalism’s clickbait era, a nuanced story that shows a side from all parties is increasingly rare. Rather, information is passed around second-hand. One website reports the original story; the others aggregate in kind. A game of Telephone can unfold, sacrificing crucial details in the process. It can be a cutthroat business.

Detroit Lions wide receiver Golden Tate has seen the highs and lows of this new age in communications. The Pro Bowl wide receiver who tallied 99 catches last season en route to a one-stop playoff appearance is undoubtedly talented. However, his public profile has also been shaped by anything from Twitter to tabloid speculation. Last year, he was the subject of rumors of adultery concerning former teammate Russell Wilson and a supposed affair that Tate had with Wilson’s ex-wife, Ashton Meem. In February, Tate denied the story, adding that it was “sad” that Wilson himself hadn’t put the claims to rest. At the same time, reports emerged of locker room tension between Tate and Buffalo Bills wide receiver Percy Harvin during their time together in Seattle, dragging Tate’s name into a story that he views as a “misunderstanding” more than anything. In April, Tate’s views on domestic violence were quickly picked apart by what he may refer to as “the eye in the sky” after he tweeted about his frustrations with social media’s reactionary culture. He would end up deleting his original tweets.

The most immediate impression of Tate runs counter to the brash, unapologetic persona you may have cobbled together from news stories. While we’re sitting at a high school field in Birmingham, Mich.—where teenagers awkwardly find reasons to walk by Tate, say hello to him, and perhaps ask for a picture—he is unfailingly polite and accommodating. And while some of his past antics and quotes have occasionally seemed larger-than-life, Tate’s quiet composure today doesn’t come across as affected or put-on. It’s clear that he would rather have a good conversation than make an easy headline. We have all heard of Golden Tate, the mercurial loudmouth. But the Tate who I’m sitting with is quick to note that he is a deeply devoted Christian (he was raised Southern Baptist), and a proud fiancé to his longtime partner, Elise Pollard. He’s a passionate supporter of the military, a commitment that extends to his charitable organization, the Golden Future Foundation.

I’m hesitant to call Tate arrogant. Self-assured, yes. But, mostly, he has no fear about communicating in a direct and honest way, whether you agree with him or not. He, for instance, will say that he would’ve been a difference-maker for the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl XLIX. When asked to name his top five receivers in the NFL, he lists himself (though, he does add Dez Bryant as a sixth, perhaps placing himself as the odd man out). Regardless of whether those things are true, you’d be hard-pressed to feel any sort of anger towards him when you hear him say it in-person. Tate is a man powered by belief; and as much as he believes it’s God who gave him his gifts, he seems to also believe in these gifts as an extension of himself. It’s not arrogance. It’s faith.

But what’s expressed in-person can fail to translate when it’s put on the page. It’s one thing to read something, but listening to someone as they say it will always add another dimension. As a public figure who is often at a distance from his spectators, Tate doesn’t usually have the luxury of his audience understanding context or tone. But even if he’s beset by questions and commentators on a regular basis (whether from the media or Twitter trolls), he’s always quick to maintain perspective. Anyone from Tate to Tom Brady will tell you that you won’t win in this league until you’ve learned how to keep your critics out of sight and out of mind.

You’re coming off a Pro Bowl season—99 catches. What’s it like going into this year with heightened expectations? Where’s your head at? 
I try to stay even as far as nerves, but my goal every year is to be just a little bit better than last year and that means collectively, personally, and to just try to win more games. If the peripheral stats come with it, that’s awesome, but it’s a team game. And since I’ve been in the league, I’ve had games where I’ve had two touchdowns and 120 yards, but we lose. That’s not a good feeling. Because you always feel like you can do more, so if that means I have three catches for 40 yards but we win—that’s what’s important to me. I’m trying to go deep in the postseason and get another Super Bowl, so that’s what’s important to me.

But your first Pro Bowl, what was that experience like?
It was a great experience. My family was there to share the moment with me, that was one of the dreams I’ve had as a youngster. Going to the Pro Bowl, win the Super Bowl, and after five years I’ve done both. It’s a huge blessing, it’s something that a lot of people can’t say they’ve done. It was a great experience for me I had a really good game. I was a little out of shape; I remember being so tired because I hadn’t ran in a couple of weeks and I didn’t know I was going to go until a few days before I left.

But great experience, great being around some of the most elite players. And one thing I’ve noticed about all these elite players, Calvin Johnson, Adrian Peterson, Aaron Rodgers, Peyton Manning—these are all high characters guys. And I think they are just the best. These are the guys that are fighting to be better every single time they step out onto the field. Very charitable guys, high character guys, and that’s one thing I noticed about the elite athletes, they are good people. And I think that’s a recipe for being a really good player in this league.

“At the time, I didn’t want to leave Seattle. I mean, coming off a Super Bowl run and being there for four years…I didn’t want to leave that.”

What’s it like to play with Calvin Johnson? Did you guys work out together during the offseason? What’s your relationship with him like?
We have a great relationship. Calvin is kind of a very humble, quiet person for the most part. But very, very entertaining at the same time. We have a really good relationship and I usually can’t keep up with his workouts because he trains so tough, and it’s hard to keep up with—not many people can. But we definitely hang out as buddies and spend time with each other. Obviously, a lot in the facility playing cornhole or ping pong. Or sitting in the meeting rooms talking about way we can be better each week.

You say you’re a competitor, but at the same time you’re playing with one of the greatest wide receivers of all time. Do you kind of bristle at being a second option?
I mean, mentally, I don’t prepare and I don’t see myself as a No. 2. You never know what’s going to happen with injuries. I mean, God forbid, Calvin goes down this year, but last year that was real. He had an ankle injury and someone had to step up; so me, preparing like I’m the No. 1 always—it wasn’t a big deal. It’s what I’ve prepared for my entire life. So I think I did a decent job of holding it down when he was gone.