Thomas Wilson was picking up his 9-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter from school last Tuesday when the highlights he thought were gone for good hit his phone.

Jon Hays, the offensive coordinator at Butte College, where Aaron Rodgers played junior college football, sent Wilson a clip from “The Pat McAfee Show” that blew up. The video has more than 630,000 views on Twitter. It shows Wilson, now 38 years old, eviscerating opposing defenses while catching passes from Rodgers at Pleasant Valley High School in Chico, Calif.

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“They hadn’t seen any footage of me playing because I just thought it was all lost because, I mean, that was the analog age, right? Wasn’t much digital video at that time,” Wilson said in a recent phone conversation with The Athletic. “I got to show them a little bit of me playing some football, so that was really cool.

“I don’t know if they think I’m any cooler or not, but they were just excited to see it.”

McAfee said he and his team wondered ahead of Rodgers’ latest appearance on the show whether he had always been accurate throwing the football. One of his producers, “Zito,” searched for Rodgers’ high school tapes on Google, unearthing the legend of Thomas Wilson.

“Who is No. 10 on your high school team?” McAfee asked Rodgers during his most recent weekly appearance. “Is this Jordy Nelson? Who was this guy?”

“Thomas Wilson, man,” Rodgers answered. “Shoutout to Thomas.”

“He was unguardable in high school, bro,” McAfee said before Rodgers recalled that Wilson was a soccer player who might’ve played just one year of high school football.

One clip showed Wilson racing down the right sideline with the ball before being tackled. The next, Wilson “Moss’d” a defender, leaping up to snag the ball deep down the left sideline before galloping into the end zone. Then another over-the-shoulder grab deep down the left sideline. That was followed by a Rodgers bomb down the right sideline that Wilson pinned to his left shoulder with one hand through tight coverage.

“Did he change his name and go to the league?” asked “Tone Digs,” one of the prominent personalities on McAfee’s show, which drew a hearty chuckle from Rodgers.

“Is that Julian Edelman?,” McAfee said. “I mean, who the f— is (No.) 10?”

Yet another deep touchdown catch by Wilson, this one after a defensive penalty, interrupted Rodgers’ story about a high school rivalry game.

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“Look at Thomas,” Rodgers interjected. “Couldn’t stop him, man.”

The clip that drew the biggest reaction was a Rodgers touchdown pass on a slant to Wilson, who made a house call while leaving four defenders from rival Chico High in the dust.

LOOK AT THESE HIGHLIGHTS‼️

"This is incredible" ~ @AaronRodgers12#PMSLive

— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) January 24, 2023

Rodgers is right. Wilson grew up playing soccer and thought that would be his meal ticket through college. He had several scholarship offers entering his senior year of high school. Garth Archibald, who was the kicker and punter on Rodgers’ high school team, didn’t want to punt anymore. He asked Wilson, the standout soccer player, if he wanted to punt. The head coach of the football team was also the head coach of the girls soccer team at Pleasant Valley, so he already knew of Wilson’s athletic exploits. He suggested Wilson give wide receiver a try.

“And the rest is kind of history,” Wilson says more than 20 years later.

Wilson played one year with Rodgers at Pleasant Valley in 2001. He said he was “so naive to football and didn’t know anything about it at the time,” contrary to what those highlights show. Wilson and Rodgers then attended Butte College, where Wilson took a redshirt year in 2002 while Rodgers threw 26 touchdown passes en route to a scholarship offer from the University of California-Berkeley. Wilson played two years at Butte and earned a scholarship to the University of New Mexico, where he caught 27 passes for 258 yards and a touchdown over two seasons.

There were 83 offensive tackles who played at least 200 pass-blocking snaps this season, per PFF.

Only two didn’t allow a sack or QB hit. One was Eagles first-team All-Pro RT Lane Johnson.

The other? David Bakhtiari.

Story on what No. 69 has left:

— Matt Schneidman (@mattschneidman) January 26, 2023

These days, Wilson serves as vice president, medical and sports performance for a company called Incrediwear, which specializes in injury prevention, performance and recovery. He still lives in Chico, has three kids, and helps out coaching wide receivers at Butte.

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“Coach t will went crazy in hs,” tweeted Caden Simmons, a current wideout at Butte, in response to the video of Rodgers reacting to Wilson’s highlights.

“Shoutout coach TWill!,” said wide receiver Jailen Hammer.

“Coach twilllll is him,” receiver Logan Blair added.

“It adds a little bit of credibility to what I was trying to teach them, coach them,” Wilson said of his players seeing him dominate catching passes from a future Pro Football Hall of Famer. “They were more so giving me a hard time, calling me big time, this and that and having my name all over ‘The Pat Mcafee Show’ and him just calling me a dog and all that fun stuff.”

If anything, Wilson enjoyed the dive into the archives from his glory days, especially since it had been so long since evidence surfaced that he was in fact a “dog” on the gridiron even with so little experience.

It seemed like a nice respite for Rodgers, too, as he contemplates a massive decision for what’s next in his own career.

Said Wilson: “Hopefully that little trip down memory lane was a nice break for him.”

(Photo of Aaron Rodgers: Rich Barnes / USA Today)