“I think of Ray a lot,” Davis said as he drove his 6-year-old son Jaxon to school Wednesday morning. “I get emotional talking about him right now. I learned a lot from him. A lot of times you don’t realize the effect somebody is having on you until years later. You kind of missed the message.”

Davis said he still proudly identifies himself as a Bulldog. He credits his three years in Athens as providing the foundation for his NFL career.

“I didn’t have the success I would have liked at Georgia, but Georgia is still the building block for me,” Davis said. “That’s where I got the confidence to know I could compete at the highest level. I look back on my career and every step of the way was important to developing who I am today as a person. So what I went through at Georgia, the good and the bad, I don’t wish it was different. It all makes you who you are. I’m not who I am today if I don’t go play at Georgia.”

Retrospectively, Davis said he’s glad he endured injury problems and sporadic playing time at Georgia.

“If I’d have gone out and had a 1,500-yard season or something like that, I may have gotten drafted by the Cleveland Browns or something,” he said. “Instead I ended up in Denver, which was the perfect place for me.”

That it was. And when Davis got the call for the Hall, one of the first persons he heard congratulations from was Goff.

“It worked out great for Terrell,” Goff said. “He ended up in the perfect place at the perfect time. He was a great player for us, but unfortunately he had injuries. I tell him, ‘if we had run you like Garrison you would have been worn out by the time you got the NFL.’”

All’s well that ends well…