"He wanted to the greatest," says Tinsley, who looks up to Kobe and Jordan for the same reason. "That's the mindset. And I like the way he went about his work."
Saffold has always been his corner man.
"We pretty much tie his hand behind his back. We position his body like somebody is holding him. So when he gets in that situation, it's not new to him," Saffold says. "I'll either tell him to put his hand behind his back, or I'll tie a band around, and I'll have like his brother or somebody hold it, and I'll shoot the ball out of the JUGS machine."
None of this surprises Clifford. He's on his home turf as one of that long line of St. Xavier High School's quarterback prodigies, and he always felt at home with Tinsley ever since he invited him to room with him at University Park.
"He'd get in late after me, and I'd ask him where he'd been, and he'd say, 'The facility,'" Clifford says. "It was always the facility. A common occurrence. Whether it was watching tape, catching JUGS, getting recovery, you could see early and often he was a guy you could rely on and count on."
That same quiet, humming reliability of a JUGS machine is what drew Saffold to Tinsley's seemingly improbable project.
A longshot himself from the same Kansas City suburbs, Saffold hooked on with the Browns as an undrafted free agent out of Missouri State in 2012 and hardly had a glass of water, never mind a cup of coffee.
He didn't get a target in a handful of preseason snaps and was gone before final cuts. He bounced around the CFL and indoor ball before going back home and coaching. That's when the smooth senior-to-be at Lee's Summit High School approached him after a couple of offseason tryout camps.
"He caught my eye. He could catch the ball. The routes and speed would come, but he could catch. He had that skill set. One of the other coaches said, forget it, he only plays basketball," says Saffold, who, like Tinsley, ran track in high school, and he saw something.
"After one of the practices, he came up to me and said, 'I know you played in the league. I have aspirations to play college and go to the NFL, and could you work with me?'"
Saffold thought the kid might be putting him on. You don't want to work with me, he told him. It's going to get weird. I'll call you at 4 a.m., sometimes, and you'll have to get up. It's three times a day. Tinsley didn't relent. They exchanged numbers. And, it turns out, fate.