Nate Davis didn’t really believe the news at first. He was with a teammate at the time — he still remembers the moment to this day — when he read the group text message to the offensive linemen informing them that their position coach, Phil Ratliff, had died. The news didn’t hit immediately. It felt weird and unbelievable.
“We just looked at each other, ‘Nah, this can’t be real, we’ll be fine,’” Davis recalled saying to his teammate.
Then the rest of his UNC-Charlotte teammates started getting messages, and Ratliff’s death started to become more real. It didn’t totally sink in for Davis until a week later at camp, when it finally took hold of him and the rest of the team. Ratliff was dead. The man who believed in Davis and recruited him to Charlotte was never going to walk on that field.
“There’s really no worse feeling,” Davis said. “Right before the season started, you expect…
