Long before he scored his first NFL touchdown last season, Broncos wide receiver Ashley Lelie had his post-score celebration planned. A former high school basketball player, Lelie always dreamed of catching a touchdown pass and dunking the football over the cross bar.

But when he finally scored in a December game at New York, he reconsidered, settling for an emphatic spike. Only one problem -- when Lelie cocked his arm back to hammer the ball into the ground, it flew out the backside of his hand.

	Ashley Lelie caught 35 passes for 525 yards last season.

"I spiked air," Lelie said. "They must have shown that replay 100 times during film sessions -- the guys couldn't get enough."

That dream moment was hardly what Lelie had pictured in his head. But few things are your rookie season.

It was just a year ago that Lelie, the subject of ESPN.com's Making the Leap series, sat in the corner of his parents Beaufort, South Carolina home and watched on television as the Denver Broncos made him the 19th pick of the 2002 NFL draft.

Since then, he's moved to Denver, bought two cars (a Mercedes CL-55 and a Hummer H2), bought a new home for himself and one for his parents and done his best to acclimate himself to his new NFL life.

It hasn't been easy. A strained hamstring plagued Lelie during training camp, a case of the drops caught up with him early in the season and an adjustment to coming off the bench has been challenging.

Ask Lelie to grade his rookie season and he flatly tells you he earned a C.

"I thought I was very average," Lelie said. "I didn't really come on until the end and even then, I wasn't all there. I had higher expectations for myself to help the team more. And I don't think I really did that."

Yet the numbers beg otherwise. Lelie, who caught 35 passes for 525 yards and two touchdowns, was arguably the most productive No. 3 receiver for the Broncos since Mike Shanahan became head coach in 1995. Statistically, only Ed McCaffrey, who caught 39 passes for 477 yards and two touchdowns in '95, compares.

Lelie's 15 yards per catch not only led the Broncos, but ranked 13th overall in the league and second among rookies with at least 30 receptions.

The production was enough to make Denver tight end and 12-year NFL veteran Shannon Sharpe tag Lelie "as good a young receiver as I've ever played with." He added, "This guy, I'm telling you, is going to be special."

Karl Dorrell, Lelie's position coach with the Broncos last year and now the head coach at UCLA, agrees that with a little bit of an improved work ethic, Lelie can be a star.

"He has a very good work ethic, but being able to raise the bar and work harder than everybody else, that's what will make him a premier receiver in this league," Dorrell said. "On talent alone he is untapped."

Needless to say, expectations for 2003 couldn't be higher. Lelie is likely to compete with McCaffrey to be Denver's No. 2 receiver behind Rod Smith. He'll also have to adjust to a new quarterback, as the Broncos signed Jake Plummer in the offseason and are expected to formally release Brian Griese later this summer.

Ashley's advice

If there's any advice Ashley Lelie would have for this year's crop of NFL prospects, it would be to have fun and genuinely enjoy the draft process. "There are too many guys that make it to be the end of the world," Lelie said. "I'm telling you -- next year at this time, you're going to wish you could go through it again." Lelie said the biggest contributing factor to making an early contribution in the NFL is confidence. "It's just like going from high school to college," he said. "The sooner you get to camp and the sooner you realize that you belong with these guys, the better off you're going to be. "When I first came out, I thought there'd be a real big difference in talent. But after one preseason game, it was like, 'Man, I can play with these guys. Talent isn't what you'll be lacking. Experience and confidence is." Lelie also stressed the rookies realize as soon as they can the business side of the game. "It wakes you up when the guy next to you is there one day and gone the next," Lelie said. "You've got people coming and going all the time. But that's the nature of the business." -- Wayne Drehs

"It's another change to deal with, but I don't know, I'm kind of excited about it," Lelie said. "It's sort of like getting a new Christmas present, like opening a new video game."

When the Broncos drafted Lelie, one of the plusses he and his Octagon representation believed was the absence of pressure to perform right away. The presence of Smith, McCaffrey and to a lesser extent Sharpe, eased Lelie's transition.

But this year, he wants to start. After a month relaxing in Hawaii, Lelie returned to Denver this week for voluntary offseason workouts with his teammates.

"I want to make a contribution early," he said. "I want to get on the ball early. And that starts in the offseason."

It was last offseason that Lelie got his first introduction to the NFL life. Early on, he struggled with his confidence. With his hamstring. And at one point, a tongue lashing by Dorrell.

"He wanted to get some fire in me, have me show more emotion," Lelie said. "But I'm not that type of person."

The support of the veteran Smith, not to mention regular phone calls to Saints rookie Donte' Stallworth, who also suffered through a roller coaster rookie year, simplified the transition.

"Everybody you line up against is the best you've ever seen," Lelie said. "If you drop off one bit, they will eat you alive. You'll get lost in the NFL and nobody will ever hear from you again."

That shouldn't be a problem for Lelie. With comments like Sharpe's, not to mention constant raves from the Broncos coaching staff as well as television broadcasters like John Madden, the expectations are there. Now he just has to meet them.

"Expectations -- they make you work harder," Lelie said. "Because if you're going to be everything that people are saying about you, it isn't just going to happen. You have to make it happen."

Wayne Drehs is a staff writer at ESPN.com. He can be reached at wayne.drehs@espn3.com