SANTA CLARA — Long before new 49ers running back Jerick McKinnon earned the nickname “Jet,” his high school coach called him something considerably less flattering.
“I used to call him a Charms Blow Pop,” Billy Shackelford said with a laugh. “Big head, skinny body. If you saw him as a freshman or a sophomore, you’d never in a million years think he’s going to be an NFL player.”
But Shackelford is on the phone now with a word of warning to 49ers fans.
Bet against Blow Pop?
Don’t be a sucker.
“I said this when I was trying to sell him in recruiting: He doesn’t have any red flags,” said Shackelford, the former coach at Sprayberry High in Marietta, Georgia.
“His only red flag, if he had one, was his size. You can’t make him any taller. But he packed on a lot of stud into that 5-9 frame of his.”
The 49ers are banking up to $36.9 million on it, signing the free agent from the Minnesota Vikings to a four-year deal Tuesday.
McKinnon, like quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo, will get superstar money without ever having been a full-season star. McKinnon never topped 600 yards rushing over four seasons in Minnesota and never started more than seven games.
Still, the little guy (5-9, 205) will get paid like one of the big boys. The 49ers’ deal provides McKinnon with $11.7 million guaranteed, as well as a $7.5 per-year average salary that’s topped by only three NFL running backs, according to OverTheCap.com.
Each of those running backs is a workhorse-type: Le’Veon Bell (who had a career-best 321 carries last season), LeSean McCoy (whose career high is 314) and Devonta Freeman (265).
McKinnon, meanwhile, has never carried the ball more than 159 times in a season. He’s had one career game with 20-plus carries — and amassed all of 36 yards (1.8 yards average).
McKinnon wasn’t exactly The Man in Minnesota. Over the course of three NFC playoff games, the Vikings gave him the ball 2, 8 and 10 times.
But, as with Garoppolo, the 49ers saw enough spark from a part-time employee to promote him to a corner office. Coach Kyle Shanahan fell for the Georgia Southern back as far back as the 2014 NFL Scouting Combine, when the coach was helping to grade running backs for the Cleveland Browns and McKinnon put on a stock-boosting show of speed, strength and agility. “You’re like, ‘Man, I think this guy’s going to be great in the league,”’ Shanahan said Thursday. “And I know how badly I wanted him.”
McKinnon, too, is ready for more.
“One-hundred percent,” he said at his introductory news conference at Levi’s Stadium on Thursday. “This is the opportunity that I’ve been waiting for, not just since I’ve been in the league, but since I’ve been playing football, period.”
I appreciate everybody who supported me and wanted to see me succeed in life I love y’all 🙏 #G2G #GVO
— Jerick Mckinnon (@JetMckinnon1) February 27, 2018
Shackelford and others who remember McKinnon’s early days in Georgia, know this pattern by heart now. First people doubt McKinnon, then he sticks it to them. It’s not just that he plays with a chip on the shoulder — he is the chip.
Consider that the kid with the big head and stick body grew up to have some Everlasting Gobstoppers for biceps. By the time he was in college, McKinnon was lifting weights with the offensive linemen.
“They weren’t as strong as he was,” said Army head coach Jeff Monken, who coached previously at Georgia Southern.
Ha-ha, good one coach …. wait. Really?
“Really. He was the strongest player on our team.”
Monken said that the 5-9 mighty mite could do 400-pound hang cleans and hoist equally preposterous totals in the squat and power clean.
“Frankly, when he was a senior, we had to put a ceiling on the weight he was putting up,” Monken said. “He was to the point where if there was any mistake in technique, any slip, could result in him really getting hurt. But what he did at the combine was not a surprise.”
At the combine, McKinnon performed 32 bench press reps of 225 pounds, second most among running back prospects since 2006.
Shananan said that McKinnon’s surprising strength makes him increasingly deft in pass protection. Garoppolo might be pleased to know that his new backfield mate, who once struggled in the role, earned the eighth best pass blocking grade among qualifying halfbacks last season, according to Pro Football Focus.
Coaches, though, talk mostly about McKinnon’s strength of spirit. Take, for example, his game-winning 14-yard touchdown against the University of Florida on Nov. 23, 2013. McKinnon took a pitch from Kevin Ellison and broke an arm tackle before zipping to the right corner of the end zone. With that, the four-touchdown underdogs handed Florida its first-ever loss to an FCS school.
McKinnon celebrated the touchdown by mimicking a home run swing, then watching an invisible ball sail into the distance.
It also symbolized a big swing-and-a-miss for Florida.
“He wanted to play there,” Shackelford said. “He really had that dream and aspiration. Of course, Florida coaches said he just wasn’t big enough to play there. All those things that they do — height, weight and all that business.
“That, for the lack of a better word, pissed him off. And I think he used that to sharpen his sword for four years.”
#49ers Jerick McKinnon on his future: pic.twitter.com/cDjKhK7NtB
— Cam Inman (@CamInman) March 15, 2018
McKinnon grew up a big Gators fan because his brother, Lester Norwood, was a safety at Florida from 1998-2002. Norwood, who was 12 years older, was McKinnon’s idol.
Jerick wanted to follow in Lester’s footsteps. As he once told Vikings.com: “Anyone who has a big brother knows what it’s like … that’s like Superman to you.”
So after Florida denied his dream, McKinnon stewed until he had a chance to punch back in the final college football came of his career. It was worth the wait. He had nine carries for 125 rushing yards, including that touchdown with 2:57 remaining to break a 20-20 tie.
Frank Sulkowski, a longtime sports anchor for Savannah station WJCL, happened to be standing behind the Florida Field end zone that day when McKinnon sprang free despite a sprained ankle.
“Even though this was Florida, even though this was SEC, they weren’t going to catch him,” Sulkowski recalled by phone. “They were such underdogs. McKinnon just said, ‘We see that, and we’re going to prove you wrong.”’
Still, McKinnon’s future role in the NFL was cloudy. Not even his position was clear. As he headed toward the draft, he said that some teams saw him as a running back while some saw him as a defensive back.
His resume certainly left room for interpretation. McKinnon played multiple positions at Georgia Southern — running back, quarterback, receiver and cornerback.
It was much the same even at Sprayberry High, where he thrived no matter the role. Shackelford, now at East Paulding High, recalled McKinnon’s accidental debut at quarterback. The team’s starter made “a poor decision,” the coach said, and earned a one-game suspension. It happened to come just hours before Sprayberry faced one of the top-rated defenses in Georgia.
“If we don’t beat this team, it could potentially knock us out of the playoffs. It’s late in the season and this game is extremely, extremely important,” Shackelford recalled.
“I pulled him out of my weight room early in the morning and said, ‘Hey, Jerick, I want you to relax and not worry about it, but you’re going to start tonight at quarterback.”’
McKinnon, a junior, looked nervous. Then he sought out the team’s chaplain. “Pastor,” he told him, “I need for you to pray for me tonight.”
On his first pass, McKinnon connected on a bubble screen for an 80-yard touchdown. After that, he sought out the chaplain again on the sideline and told him: “Pastor, we’re going to be all right.”
Now, past coaches say McKinnon’s multi-position background will be the key to his success in Shanahan’s offense. He can run, block, catch and read defenses (by virtue of his years as an option quarterback).
McKinnon himself used the phrase “perfect fit” several times Thursday in describing his excitement about signing with the 49ers. He watched the way Shanahan counted on versatility from Freeman and Tevin Coleman while serving as the offensive coordinator for the Atlanta Falcons.
General Manager John Lynch praised McKinnon for one other skill — being a good dude — in introducing the running back and center Weston Richburg on Thursday.
“These are guys that we want to build our locker room around,” Lynch said.
On that count, at least, McKinnon has never had any doubts. Those who know him say he’s always been as sweet as candy.
“He was a model student. He had a big heart and was someone the kids looked up to,” Mark Giles, the school’s athletic director, wrote in an e-mail. “He always made time to talk to everyone whether it was one of our special-needs students, middle school kids in our junior programs, or just one of his classmates. He was a very humble kid. The Sprayberry community is very proud of him.”
