2022 Official Chargers Season Discussion

[Ghost of Quacksaw]

Regardless, he'll get a chance with the Chargers. IMO he's our short yardage back with RB2 upside.

There's *that* role, but they're also looking for a back who can step in for Ekeler for a drive here or there, maybe three times per game. Giving Ek a respite, and helping ensure he's got enough left when he's needed at the end of a game.

If the Chargers have a running back who can do *that*, he'll be making TWO roster spots more effective-- his own, and Ekeler's.

I'm really hoping that Spiller is up to the task, but of course we have no real clue until we see scrimmages and pre-season games.

I think Zander Horvath is another candidate to be the short yardage answer. His best asset seems to be as a receiver out of the backfield, but he has the size, quickness and power to be given a shot as the short yardage specialist.

[Heatmiser]

Thanks Xenos!

And Roo, Reed seems to be largely forgotten. We'll see what he can do. He might be a spark if used right.

TG

[Bearded14YourPleasure]

We may already have the right candidate for RM2 on the roster - Joe Reed. I know they drafted him as a WR but he has the attributes needed to be a successful RB. He's also fast. I hope they try him out at RB.

I’ve been hoping for this since they drafted Reed. Don’t even need to have him as a true RB but even just using him on some end arounds would be nice to see. I’m hoping Reed shows enough this year that he forces the coaches to keep 6 WR but I’m doubtful, I think there is too much overlap in skill sets between him and Carter.

[Formula 21]

LA Times

His family was scared he’d go to prison. How J.C. Jackson kept his NFL dream alive




Chargers cornerback J.C. Jackson carries the ball during minicamp in Costa Mesa in June.
(Jae C. Hong / Associated Press)

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By Jeff Miller
Staff WriterFollow


July 25, 2022 5 AM PT
First in a series exploring the origin stories of three of the Chargers’ top defensive players, each of whom grew up in a small rural town in Florida.
Today, J.C. Jackson, who hasn’t had a football career as much as a football odyssey.
LAKELAND, Fla. — They sold their house, their furniture, Dad’s truck and his motorcycle.
Lisa Dasher and Chris Jackson surrendered their jobs and their friends and trekked 140 miles north, joining Lisa’s oldest daughter in her apartment — her one-and-a-half bedroom apartment.
“We was living in the half,” Lisa recalled, smiling.
Dasher, Jackson and their son, J.C., were three of the seven people wedged into the space, their lives squeezed for the most basic of reasons: They needed money.

Yes, the bills were significant. And so were the circumstances. They had to pay the attorneys trying to keep J.C. out of prison.
“Every success he’s having now is very emotional to me because I know the path,” Lisa said. “I tell people, ‘You don’t understand everything that we had to sacrifice to be here.’ It just wasn’t easy. But I’m glad we made it, man.”

In March, J.C. Jackson signed with the Chargers, accepting a five-year contract worth up to $82.5 million, $40 million of which is guaranteed.
A team rebuilding its defense added one of the NFL’s top cornerbacks, a tough, resilient, playmaking star coming off his first Pro Bowl appearance and four seasons removed from being a Super Bowl champion.
But the Chargers added more than that because Jackson hardly arrived on his own, his path cluttered by obstacles discouraging to staggering, including a trial that threatened not just his football but also his freedom.
Navigating such a twisting, tortured journey required the strength of more than just one man.

“J.C.,” his dad said, “hasn’t walked alone in his shoes.”

Before he was a Hall of Famer, Edgerrin James was a blocking back, burying opposing tacklers for Chris Jackson during their time together at Immokalee High. James was two grades behind Jackson and, playing in a stacked program, had to wait his turn.
“That’s how it was back in the day,” said John Thomas, a longtime Immokalee coach. “The talent’s usually lined up pretty good around here.”
They called Chris “Action Jackson” because of his athletic prowess. He and his crew labeled themselves “The Raw Dogs” and set out to properly represent their home.
Immokalee is an everyone-knows-everyone town deep in southwest Florida and the heart of industrial agriculture in the United States. They grow an abundance of tomatoes and watermelons down here, a dusty place where there’s genuine value in the dirt.
In the Mikasuki language, Immokalee means “My Home,” and the pride of the people who choose to stay can be as thick as the July humidity.
“If you gonna make it out of Immokalee, you gotta get it from the mud,” said Jackson, 47. “Nothing comes easy in Immokalee. It taught me to grind, to be a strong man.”
Jackson had plans to leave, at least for a while, to pursue a playing opportunity at a small school in Mississippi. Lisa, who was a state-qualifying sprinter at Immokalee, remembers dropping him off at the bus station in Fort Myers and waving goodbye through streaming tears.

Chargers cornerback J.C. Jackson carries the ball during a game for a youth team in Immokalee, Fla.
(Jackson family)


But after only a week or so, Jackson was on his way home, where he and Lisa soon enough were welcoming their son.
“I wanted to be in J.C.’s life,” said Jackson, who was raised by his grandparents. “Everything I knew about football, I wanted to put into him.”
They spent hours together in the backyard, Chris firing passes to J.C. and urging him to catch with his fingertips. At age 4, J.C. was spinning around on his father’s command and snagging footballs spiraling toward his face.
Dad was training the boy’s hands, hands that two decades later would carry the reminder of an Immokalee upbringing yet still ignite an NFL career rooted in the ability to catch passes thrown by the opposition.

When he was 5, J.C. scored the first touchdown of his life. It was flag football and he slipped to the outside and sprinted away from everyone. Well, almost everyone.
“I was running right with him down the sidelines, jumping and screaming,” Lisa said. As she did so, she yelled, “He’s gonna play for the Florida Gators! He’s gonna play for the Florida Gators!”
That was the plan too, after J.C. was a four-year varsity starter at Immokalee, his two all-state plaques as a wide receiver now hanging near the school’s main entrance, not far from the plaque commemorating his All-America selection as a defensive back.

“He lit up the stadium right from the start.”

— John Thomas, a longtime Immokalee football coach


Thomas has spent a quarter-century coaching at Immokalee and was in charge of the receivers when he convinced Chris that his son was too talented to play on the freshman team and instead belonged on varsity.
J.C. needed roughly one-half of one game to prove his position coach correct.
“He lit up the stadium right from the start,” said Thomas, who recalls sitting in film sessions on Saturday mornings and wondering what the opposing coaches were thinking trying to cover J.C. one-on-one.
The talent was obvious, and so were the other gifts, most notably the long and athletic body that suggested J.C. could be special, as Chris remembers it, as early as elementary school.
Fort Myers-based trainer LeDondrick Rowe first worked with J.C. during the kid’s sophomore season in high school. All the Immokalee players were lined up in the end zone as Rowe walked along and introduced himself one by one.
“I got to J.C. and asked him what position he played,” Rowe said. “He told me wide receiver. I said, ‘Dude, you’re a defensive back.’ Those were our first words: ‘You look like an NFL defensive back.’ ”
All that work J.C. and his father logged in the backyard — sometimes out there past midnight — was boosted by another level of training, a tough-love regimen Chris employed throughout his son’s development.




He explained that he “used to cuss J.C. out, just talk harsh to him, ’cause I knew what it takes to make it.” Lisa said she often defended her son as Chris assured her his methods would paid dividends.
During an NFL game two seasons ago, while playing with New England, Jackson was beaten twice by receiver Breshad Perriman for touchdowns — 50 yards in the second quarter and 15 in the third — the latter putting the New York Jets up 27-17.
Following the second score, a television camera caught Jackson slumped on the bench, his head hanging.
“I said, ‘Lisa, I’m in his ear again right now,’ ” Chris said, edging forward in his seat. “J.C. was hearin’ his daddy. I said, ‘Watch, he’s gonna make a play.’ ”
In the final six minutes of the fourth quarter, Jackson picked off Joe Flacco. Four minutes later, New England tied the score en route to a 30-27 victory secured on the game’s last snap.

New England Patriots cornerback J.C. Jackson warms up before a game against the Houston Texans in October. Jackson signed a five-year contract with the Chargers in March.
(Eric Christian Smith / Associated Press)


“All that talking,” Lisa said, “I think that’s what kept J.C. strong through everything.”
During his four years of two-way high school stardom, J.C. emerged as a recruit so sought after that Lisa remembers hiding when someone would show up unannounced and knock on the door.
She also recalled how the Miami coaches arrived one day for dinner in a series of black SUVs with dark-tinted windows. “They rolled up,” Lisa said, “like the President.”
But J.C. chose Florida — fulfilling his mother’s Pop Warner projection — because he was drawn to then-coach Will Muschamp and his defensive coordinator, D.J. Durkin.
It was a shoulder injury that resulted in Jackson redshirting his first season. It was an off-field incident that cost him the rest of his Gators career.
In April 2015, Jackson was arrested and charged with four felonies in connection with an armed robbery in Gainesville. He and two companions were involved, though Jackson no longer was present when the robbery occurred, according to the police report.
Still, he faced those four counts, each carrying a minimum sentence of 10 years and a maximum of life in prison.

“I was scared. Forty years in jail? I might be dead and gone when he gets out.”

— Chris Jackson, on the charges his son faced in connection to a 2015 armed robbery


When officials at Florida informed Jackson he no longer was welcome there, his desire to continue playing led him to Riverside City College, three time zones from Gainesville and an immeasurable distance from SEC country.
That November, Jackson’s lone season at Riverside was interrupted when he had to return to Florida for his trial, which included five days of excruciating uncertainty for parents convinced their son had done nothing wrong but knowing a jury would make the ultimate decision.
Each morning, Chris and J.C. would drive from the cramped apartment in Lakeland to Gainesville, leaving before the sun came up, traveling the 120 miles one way in Chris’ orange Dodge Charger.
Chris said they had to “scrape up gas money” to make it through the week. One of the attorneys the family hired bought J.C. a suit to wear in court.
On those otherwise quiet drives, Chris played what he called “my church music” — “Be Encouraged” by gospel singer William Becton was in heavy rotation.
J.C. would sit back in the passenger seat and, in the darkness, Chris would stroke his son’s head. “Just lovin’ on him,” Chris said.
“I was scared,” the father acknowledged. “Forty years in jail? I might be dead and gone when he gets out.”

Chargers cornerback J.C. Jackson during his playing days at Immokalee High School in Immokalee, Fla.
(Jackson family)


On the morning of the final day, Lisa said she wept while wrapping her arms around J.C.

“I hugged him hard ’cause I didn’t know what the verdict was going to be,” she said. “I told him, ‘Remember this: I love you so much.’ He said, ‘Ma, I’ll be back.’ I’m looking at him like, Do you not know what you’re up against?”
Chris said he sat in the back of the courtroom each day with tears in his eyes as he listened to the prosecutor characterize his son as a criminal. At some point during the week, Chris said he stopped eating.
Lisa couldn’t bring herself to attend the proceedings. She remained in Lakeland where she had just started a new job, working in early child care.
She wasn’t allowed to have her cell phone on during business hours, meaning she spent that entire final afternoon unaware of her son’s fate. Asked to explain the experience, Lisa said, “H-e-l-l.”
Up in Gainesville, the jury deliberated for approximately two hours before — in the late morning four days before J.C.’s 20th birthday — acquitting him on all four counts.
At the end of her work day, Lisa retrieved her phone from a desk drawer and turned it on.
“There was so many calls, so many messages,” she said. “ ‘Not guilty! Not guilty! Not guilty!’ All of a sudden, I’m crying and crying and trying to call everybody back at once.”
The jury sided with J.C. after hearing testimony that he arranged the visit in which the robbery occurred but was not otherwise involved. His attorneys argued that the evidence against him was circumstantial.
After being cleared, Jackson returned to Riverside, a step that helped put his football career back on track, leading him to Maryland, where he reunited with Durkin, then the Terrapins coach.
In his first Maryland practice, an oft-repeated story goes, Jackson intercepted three passes. He made 23 starts over two seasons and became a draft prospect some observers forecast to go as high as the second round.
“I can’t let it go unknown how much we appreciate what the people at Maryland did for J.C.,” said Lisa, now 48. “We thank them so much.”

J.C. Jackson runs the 40-yard dash at the 2018 NFL Scouting Combine.
(Gregory Payan / Associated Press)

“I think J.C. is Immokalee. I saw a kid struggle. I saw a kid grow. I saw a kid overcome. If you’re not tough, Immokalee can overwhelm you.”

— LeDondrick Rowe, trainer who worked extensively with J.C. Jackson



It was after the combine that Jackson — back home and sitting at a Tropical Smoothie Cafe having lunch with his mother — revealed how depressed he was at times in Riverside.
“He just started crying,” Lisa recalled. “I said, ‘J.C., what’s wrong?’ He said, ‘You just don’t know. It was so hard out in California. I was sleeping on floors, not having food. That was the time I wanted to just forget it all.’ It hurt me to my heart hearing that because I had no idea that he was struggling that bad. None of us knew.”
Now, though, all the pain, all the sacrifice would be swept away by the 2018 draft. Having since moved into their own apartment in Lakeland, Chris and Lisa hosted a viewing party.
J.C. was surrounded by the love and support of more than a dozen family members and friends. There was food, including cupcakes made to look like little footballs.
Over three days and 256 selections, the name J.C. Jackson was never announced. Teams took 28 cornerbacks and passed on him every chance they had.
If he was going to make it in the NFL, this cornerback with all the ball skills was going to have to reach out and steal someone else’s roster spot as an undrafted free agent.
And that’s exactly what Jackson did with New England, first starring during scout-team repetitions, flustering at times even all-everything quarterback Tom Brady.



Chargers
It’s safety first for rehabbing Derwin James at practice but not for a new contract


June 15, 2022



As training camp unfolded, Jackson began getting time with the first-stringers. He ended his rookie season appearing in 13 games, with five starts, and launched a four-year stretch in which he intercepted an NFL-best 25 passes.
Those hands, first trained by Dad, soon secured the second-largest signing bonus in Chargers history while offering another example of Jackson’s perseverance.
When his boy was just 7 or 8, Chris got J.C. a job at a watermelon processing plant to expose him to the exact sort of existence he wanted his son to avoid in life.
While he was positioned along a conveyor belt, J.C.’s hand became entangled in the machinery. Seeing blood oozing everywhere, Chris grabbed his son and carried him to a nearby fire station.
The boy spent almost a week in the hospital and required surgery to restore the mangled mess hanging from his arm. In his right hand today, Jackson literally holds the scars of his hometown.
“J.C. is Immokalee,” said Rowe, the Fort Myers-based trainer. “I saw a kid struggle. I saw a kid grow. I saw a kid overcome. If you’re not tough, Immokalee can overwhelm you.”

Over his first three NFL seasons, Jackson played on an entry-level deal before receiving a one-year, $3.4-million contract for 2021.
When he signed with the Chargers, he earned a $25-million bonus on the spot. During the next two seasons, he is guaranteed another $15 million in base salary. The kid from Immokalee had made it, had indeed gotten it from the mud.

J.C. Jackson and his mom, Lisa Dasher, and dad, Chris Jackson, stand with their son after he signed with the Chargers in March.
(Jackson family)


His big payday came after Jackson watched his father work in everything from corrections to sanitation — “throwin’ trash,” Chris described it — before becoming a delivery driver.
Lisa has worked extensively with teenage mothers and is employed at Pace Center for Girls.
There are plans for Jackson to buy his parents a new home, something closer to Tampa ... maybe near the water.
In May, he bought each an Audi. Lisa drives hers regularly, while Chris has his in storage. For now, he prefers the 2011 orange Charger, which has eclipsed 200,000 miles.
Chris’ Audi was delivered while he was at work, with no advance warning, a surprise that came with a sticker price of $181,790.
He simply was called outside to the parking lot, where the car was hidden under a cover, with a big red bow on the hood.
There also was a note from J.C., who signed it “#27.”
“Without U,” the note read, “There Is No Me.”





About this series
The assignment covered four days and nearly 700 miles through the summer steam of relentlessly flat central Florida.

There were stops in Lakeland, Auburndale, Immokalee, Fort Pierce, Vero Beach, Haines City and Davenport.

All in the name of exploring the roots of three of the Chargers’ top defenders — cornerback J.C. Jackson, edge rusher Khalil Mack and safety Derwin James Jr.

Each a small-town legend from a rural Florida outpost before now joining forces some 2,500 miles from home in the intense glare of the NFL.

Along with edge rusher Joey Bosa and cornerback Asante Samuel Jr., both of whom attended St. Thomas Aquinas in Fort Lauderdale, the Chargers’ 2022 defense is, as James smartly noted this spring, “Florida’d out.”

So, presented in three parts over three days, here are the origin stories of Jackson, Mack and James, told largely through the eyes of the parents who raised them.

[blueman]

Wow. Just wow.

[Lefty2SLO]

LA Times

See article before.

What a great read. Makes me proud he's a Charger.

[Formula 21]

JC has a great family.

[CivilBolt]

JC has a great family.

Glad juror found him not guilty. Imagine going to jail for 40 years for something you didn’t do. I’m definitely rooting for him this season.

[Ghost of Quacksaw]

The Bears just signed Riley Reiff, so anyone clinging to hopes that Telesco was going to sign a vet right tackle? Those hopes just got slimmer.

[CivilBolt]

The Bears just signed Riley Reiff, so anyone clinging to hopes that Telesco was going to sign a vet right tackle? Those hopes just got slimmer.

Not really concern about the RT position. We should have plenty of good guards if we need to kick out Feiler to the outside.

[Formula 21]

LA Times

How Khalil Mack’s family helped him annihilate his ‘soft’ reputation




Chargers linebacker Khalil Mack answers questions during a minicamp news conference in June. Mack, considered one of the NFL’s top-tier pass rushers, was acquired by the Chargers in a trade with the Chicago Bears in March.
(Marcio Jose Sanchez / Associated Press)



By Jeff Miller
Staff WriterFollow


July 26, 2022 5 AM PT
Second in a series exploring the origin stories of three of the Chargers’ top defensive players with Florida roots.
Today, edge rusher Khalil Mack, whose harmony at home helped shape him as a player — and a man.
FORT PIERCE, Fla. — He could see the potential in all that mass and all those muscles, the physical promises so pronounced that the kid’s high school coach begged his father to let him play.
Robert Wimberly knew Khalil Mack could fit in at Liberty University right away and maybe, if things went well, with two more years of development be ready for a larger football program.

Then a Liberty assistant, Wimberly was the only college coach who showed interest in Mack, a prospect left on the periphery because of a high school career that covered a single season.
The staff at Florida said Mack couldn’t play in the Southeastern Conference. Miami’s coaches expressed similar doubts about his Atlantic Coast Conference chances. Others questioned whether Mack was explosive enough or flexible enough.
A sport that values so highly what it can see on tape lacked sufficient evidence — just 12 games? — on Mack.
But Wimberly had seen enough of his 140 stops during that one fall at Westwood High to appreciate that, as a linebacker, he played with something all defensive coaches believe they can build upon: a solid base.
What Wimberly didn’t realize until he sat down with Mack one night for dinner — along with Mack’s parents and two brothers — was how impressive the kid’s foundation was, as well.





“It was almost like the Huxtables, you know, on the ‘The Cosby Show,’ ” Wimberly recalled. “There was sincere love among them. Everyone was genuinely excited for Khalil. Just a lot of love and respect in that household.”
When the Chargers aimed to rebuild their defense this offseason, the first move was to trade for Mack, who came from Chicago in mid-March at the cost of two draft picks — a second-round selection in 2022 and a sixth-round selection in 2023.
With Mack now 31 and trying to rebound from a season in which he missed 10 games because of a foot injury, it is fair to wonder where the six-time Pro Bowl pick is heading.
But there can be no questioning where Mack came from, a former two-star recruit reared in a five-star home that as recently as last year gained even more glow.
“It’s just all the grace of God,” Mack’s father, Sandy, said. “This couldn’t be orchestrated. You couldn’t write this. We don’t take any credit for what God has done. That would be robbery.”

---

Khalil Mack walks off the field after running drills at the Chargers’ practice facility in Costa Mesa on June 1.
(Alex Gallardo / Associated Press)



The name “Khalil” came from one of Sandy’s muscle magazines and proved prophetic when the baby boy debuted at nearly 11 pounds and with definition in his arms, legs and everywhere else.
This was a toddler with traps. Doctors were so concerned about Mack’s size that they had him tested for diabetes.
“He came out with quads,” Sandy said. “Big shoulders. Big legs. Right away I thought, ‘This boy’s different.’ ”
Sandy and his wife, Yolanda, were high school sweethearts at Fort Pierce’s Central High. They were married in the cafeteria of another school nearby, Lincoln Park Academy, where Yolanda’s mother worked.
Having lost his father at an early age, Sandy never had the chance to play high school sports despite his own muscular, athletic frame. He and twin brother Sammie Jr. had to work instead.
“Mom told us,” Sandy explained, “ ‘You can either play sports or you can eat.’ ”
As an adult, he became a corrections officer at the St. Lucie County Jail, and, concerned with protecting himself, Sandy began working out at a local gym. He and Sammie Jr. soon were battling to see who could get bigger.
That’s the way it was with these twins, who competed against each other with the intensity of worst enemies or best friends.
And that’s also how it was for Sandy’s three sons — Sandy Jr., Khalil and Ledarius. As the oldest brother, Sandy Jr. loved challenging Khalil, the quietest of the Mack boys. So did Dad.
Years later and still today, observers marvel at Mack’s ability to go from talking soft to hitting hard in the time it takes to stride across the white lines that define a football field.
“Between Sandy Jr. and I, we used to put it on him pretty good,” Sandy, 57, said. “Khalil got it from both of us. You better throw a switch in that situation because crying’s not going to work.”

Khalil Mack, left, stands next to his mother, Yolanda, and his brother, Ledarius, during his final home game at Buffalo University.
(Mack family)

‘The first guy you hit out there, I don’t want him to get up.’ That was my little pep talk.”

— Sandy Mack, on the instructions he gave Khalil Mack before his first youth football game



He took it, but Mack also gave it back. Sandy recalled more than once having to halt a backyard basketball game to remind Mack that Dad had to go to work in the morning and he’d prefer to do so without multiple bruises.
Yolanda’s half of the family is where the quiet comes from. Mack loved spending time with his maternal grandfather, Alfred Booker, the two bonding after Booker would pick him up from school.
“He has a personality like my dad — real laid back, no worries,” Yolanda said. “Khalil is just Khalil, you know. He was kind of a homebody.”
“Boring and focused” is how Mack has described himself when he was growing up, those qualities leading some people around the family to question his toughness. The doubters included a cousin who used to call Mack “soft.”
The fact he wasn’t especially drawn to football added to the notion that a kid who would become a three-time NFL All-Pro and quarterback terrorizer somehow lacked sufficient aggression.
“He just never really wanted to play the sport,” Sandy said. “But I’d tell people all the time, ‘If I get him off this leash, you’ll see.’ ”






When he was 12, Mack decided to give organized football a shot. First, though, he and his father had a discussion.
“I sat him down and told him, ‘OK, these guys are saying you’re soft,’ ” Sandy remembered. “ ‘The first guy you hit out there, I don’t want him to get up.’ That was my little pep talk.”
To understand how things went from there, it’s not inaccurate to report that Mack put the pop in Pop Warner. Early in his first game, Sandy recalled, Mack caused a violent collision near the sidelines after appearing only as a blur.

“I didn’t even know it was Khalil,” Sandy said. “People were saying, ‘Mack, that’s your son!’ I was like, ‘Yeah!’ While I was celebrating, I didn’t see the paramedics coming to get the other guy. I didn’t know Khalil was going to do it for real. The kid had to go to the hospital. I felt kind of guilty about that.”
Still, Mack, more interested in basketball, wouldn’t play football again until late in high school, during the spring before his senior year. By then, a torn patella tendon had sidetracked his hoops plans and, while rehabbing from the injury, Mack had thrown himself into weight lifting, first asking to join his father at the gym and later insisting on it.
At the time, Sandy had concerns about his son’s academic standing, particularly Mack‘s struggles with math. Admitting he hadn’t been a great student, Sandy said he understood the difficulties in falling behind in school.


Sandy also had worked at a juvenile detention center and was aware of the dangers that lurked for teenagers, especially outside a structured life. He figured the military might be Khalil’s best chance to get out of Fort Pierce.
But one day at work, Sandy’s phone rang and it was Westwood High’s new coach, a man named Waides Ashmon, who had just pulled Mack out of class to talk to him about playing football again. Mack’s response: “You need to talk to my dad.”
“I called and said, ‘Mr. Mack, I’ve been doing this a long time,’ ” Ashmon said. “ ‘I’ve never guaranteed a parent that their kid’s gonna go to school. But if you allow Khalil to play for me, I promise you he’ll go to school free.’ ”
Ashmon was so certain of Mack’s potential that he made the assurance even after glimpsing Mack only in a collared shirt and shorts. He figured that physique alone would be too enticing to college coaches.
The conversation — and enclosed guarantee of a continued, free education — convinced Sandy, who agreed by the end of the call to allow his son to return to football.
With that decision, Mack went into full pursuit, this player who later would become famous for his ability to chase down quarterbacks.

Khalil Mack’s retired jersey at Westwood High in Fort Pierce, Fla.
(Mack family)



In one of his first practices that spring, Mack proved he could do more than just look as if he belonged. With Yolanda waiting in the parking lot to take her son to a class at a nearby community college, Westwood’s coaches told Mack to go first during a tackling drill.
“Khalil beat the block and smacked the running back and it was like, ‘Oh, you’re done. Go to class, kid,’ ” said Jabari Williams, then a Westwood assistant. “It took just one hit. After that, we knew we had ourselves something.”
Yet, Mack was regarded as only the third-best prospect on a team that would finish 10-2. Defensive lineman Luther Robinson, who went to Miami and eventually to the Green Bay Packers, and quarterback Isaac Virgin, who played at South Florida as a tight end, were ranked ahead of him.
As much as the Westwood staff promoted Mack — Williams: “We were begging schools to take him.” — the pleas went unheard.
“I was like, ‘What are y’all … we can’t be watching the same film,’ ” Ashmon said. “But I also knew Khalil’s work ethic and how with college coaching he would get a lot better.”
Mack’s lone offer came from Liberty, which is where he was headed until Wimberly left to take a job at Buffalo. Mack followed him, receiving the full-ride Ashmon had promised Sandy.





That summer and into training camp, Wimberly remembers the Bulls’ coaches debating about whether to play Mack or redshirt him. Asked his opinion, Wimberly sided with redshirting, noting that Mack, with more experience, could be “super special.”
Buffalo did redshirt him, slowing the start of Mack’s college career but hardly the beginning of his rapid growth. Actually playing wasn’t a requirement to show he could make plays.
One day, a reporter from upstate New York called Sandy with a question:

“Mr. Mack, do you know what your son is up here doing?”
“No. No I don’t.”
“Your son’s doing some things we’ve never seen before.”
“Really?”
“Mr. Mack, I think your son is going to be something real special here at Buffalo.”

Khalil Mack walks off the field after a game between Buffalo and Pittsburgh in October 2012.
(Bill Wippert / Associated Press)


Wrecking practices, that’s what Mack was doing, to the point where Wimberly said he was asked more than once by a fellow Buffalo assistant, “Wimbo, can you talk to him, please?”
Mack was leaving impressions — the black-and-blue kind, and others much more permanent.
Sandy took another call from Buffalo one afternoon. This time, it was an assistant coach telling him his son was doing something the coach had never seen before: Mack was cleaning the locker room.
When his boys were young, Sandy would bring them along anytime he would do volunteer work in and around Fort Pierce. “Because it’s just the right thing to do,” he said he’d tell them if they asked why they had to go.
Today, Mack is widely recognized for giving back. His foundation made a $500,000 donation to a Fort Pierce park that now includes a football field bearing Mack’s name.
Westwood needed football uniforms a few years back and, the school’s athletic director said, Sandy wrote a $20,000 check. Just a couple weeks ago, a box full of several pairs of cleats showed up unannounced at Westwood, compliments of Mack, who also has done things such as pay off all the layaway bills at the local Walmart around Christmastime.

“It’s a family thing,” Ashmon said. “Khalil’s mimicking his dad. His dad was giving back way before Khalil became Khalil.”

Sandy Mack, left, Yolanda Mack, Khalil Mack and Fort Pierce city manager Nick Mimms at the dedication of Khalil Mack Field in Fort Pierce, Fla.
(Mack family)


After he signed his first NFL contract, Mack bought his parents a home in nearby Vero Beach. He also paid off his dad’s truck.
The BMW and Mercedes in the driveway of that Vero Beach house came from Mack, who has rewarded some of the younger members of the extended household with cars in exchange for maintaining their grades.
This is a family anchored in its faith and its church, Sandy and Yolanda both deacons at the Miracle Prayer Temple Worship Center. They all love music and have been part of the church band. Sandy has written and recorded gospel songs.
Mack can sing, too, and also taught himself to play the guitar while in college. Sandy thought he was the best piano player in the family until Ledarius came along.
As the church’s music director, Sandy would arrange songs so that the Macks could sing four-part harmony. They still can do it, on cue, which happened recently when the boys were back together.

“I’m telling you, you couldn’t orchestrate this. No way. This was orchestrated at a higher level.”

Khalil Mack attends the 2014 NFL draft in New York with his mother, Yolanda. Mack was selected fifth overall by the Oakland Raiders.
(Mack family)


(Five years after Khalil left Buffalo, Ledarius joined the Bulls’ football program for two seasons. He debuted in the NFL last year, appearing in three games for the Bears. How rich is the athletic DNA in this family? Ledarius attended a high school — Lincoln Park Academy — that didn’t have a football team and then went to a small college in Miami to play basketball before giving football a try.)
The story goes that in the lead-up to that 2013 season opener in Columbus, then-Buckeyes coach Urban Meyer was talking about Mack when, suddenly forgetting his name, referred to him as “No. 46.”
After Ohio State’s 40-20 victory, Mack approached Meyer, extended his right hand and introduced himself.
Longtime coach Lou Tepper was Buffalo’s defensive coordinator during that time. He spent nearly a half-century in football and literally wrote the book on linebacker play, putting Mack on the cover of the second edition of “Complete Linebacking.”
To grasp the totality of Mack’s impact, though, consider that Tepper, to this day, texts Mack a Bible verse every Saturday morning and speaks of him with a reverence rooted in nothing having to do with football.
“I love him,” Tepper said, “and if he had never played a down in the NFL, if he had never been drafted, I wouldn’t love him any differently.”

Chargers linebacker Khalil Mack runs drills at the team’s practice facility in Costa Mesa on June 14.
(Marcio Jose Sanchez / Associated Press)


So what’s left? Just this: Remember that line about the five-star home gaining more glow? In June of 2021, Sandy and Yolanda heard from a man named Jalen Parmele, who, using one of those ancestry programs, discovered he was a Mack boy, as well. The original Mack boy.

Sandy and Yolanda had a son before Sandy Jr. arrived. At the time, they both thought they were too young to properly handle the responsibility, so they put the baby up for adoption.
Parmele grew up in Michigan to be a football player and made the NFL, a running back who spent parts of five seasons with Baltimore, Jacksonville and Arizona.
A month after Parmele reached out to the Macks, everyone reunited in Florida for a genuine Son-shine State celebration. They filled in the gaps of their life stories and shot selfies, embracing a previously unknown family chapter.
Sandy smiled when he pointed out that Parmele played in college at Toledo, which is in the same conference as Buffalo. That’s right, another Mack in the MAC.
“I’m telling you, you couldn’t orchestrate this,” Sandy said. “No way. This was orchestrated at a higher level.”

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Not really concern about the RT position. We should have plenty of good guards if we need to kick out Feiler to the outside.

The coaches seem to be content with Feiler at guard.