Raheem Mostert's path to NFL success began at Purdue, but nothing came easy
When Raheem Mostert came out for the Purdue track team his junior year in West Lafayette, his elite raw talent was quickly apparent, albeit unrefined.
It wasn't such an acute flaw that it would prevent the football player from a dominant run during his side gig for Purdue, but he did start slow, slow being a relative term for a sprinter with elite ability. He'd start slow — again, relatively speaking — but once a race opened up, Mostert more often than not simply passed everyone.
Purdue's track and field coaches worked specifically to smooth out the rough edges in Mostert's technique coming out of the blocks, to get him into full stride faster.
In a sense, it was a microcosm of Mostert's career to come, a career that will put him on one of sports' biggest stages this weekend, amidst the sudden stardom he's found for the NFL's San Francisco 49ers. The Niners meet the Kansas City Chiefs Sunday in Super Bowl LIV.
Mostert's story has been well covered. The Niners are his seventh team. The Eagles, Ravens, Dolphins, Jets, Bears and Browns cut him prior to him landing in the Bay Arena in 2016.
Once opportunity arose, though, he raw away with it.
Two weeks ago, a career special-teamer who'd only this year gotten a substantive opportunity from scrimmage posted one of the greatest performances in NFL playoff history, totaling 220 rushing yards and four touchdowns against the Packers in the NFC title game.
The opportunity had finally come for an athlete of blistering speed but conditioned by circumstance and his own demeanor for patience and persistence, both of which have served him well.
Purdue track and field coach Norbert Elliott remembers Mostert joining his track and field program his junior year, on loan from a football program that had yet to weaponize him beyond his elite return skills.
"He basically wanted to have some worth, to feel some collegiate self-worth," said Elliott, who coached Purdue's sprinters at the time and is now the Boilermakers' head coach. "... He wanted to contribute, wanted to be involved in some sort of success for the university."
Mostert was so naturally gifted in track and field that he stood out from the moment he joined Purdue's team. In 2014, he stepped off the football field and onto the track and won the Big Ten's 60- and 200-meter indoor titles and its 100- and 200-meter outdoor titles right away. His junior year, he ran the equivalent of a 10.1 in the 100, within the range of Olympic-level.
Football was more of a process.
When Lance Jenkins and his coaching staff took control at Florida's New Smyrna Beach High School, on the opposite coast of the one where Mostert has now found his place in the sport, they did so hoping to build a strong defense first. Taking over the spring prior to Mostert's senior year, they lined him up at safety.
It lasted only a couple games.
"We only played him at safety the first few games," Jenkins remembers. "It was a waste. We were wearing him out on defense and not allowing him to excel on offense."
So they moved him to a Swiss Army Knife role, to get the ball in his hands however they could each week.
After the season, Jenkins reached out to Purdue's staff to check on another player and Mostert's name came up. A few days later, Danny Hope and his offensive coordinator, Gary Nord, visited New Smyrna Beach, watched Mostert in the weight room, and gave him his first major offer, which was ultimately accepted.
More: Danny Hope, Akeem Hunt on Raheem Mostert
Make no mistake: Mostert made an impact for Purdue football quickly. He was an outstanding return man, averaging nearly 34 yards per opportunity as a freshman, leading the nation.
But Purdue's plan to make a wide receiver out of him didn't work. He had the size and speed, but running routes and completing catches didn't come naturally, as returns did. He didn't catch a pass his first two seasons at Purdue; all 32 of his touches from scrimmage were handoffs.
When Darrell Hazell's staff came in before the 2013 season, Mostert's junior year, it considered is options with him as a potential asset offensively.
"The biggest thing was everyone realized he was a talented player," said Jafar Williams, who coached running backs at Purdue during Mostert's career and is now Virginia Tech's wide receivers coach. "I know he played some receiver and may have played some DB and he wanted to be at a position where we could really utilize him.
"I don't know how well he catches it all the time, even though he does have solid hands, but when you're talking about having elite speed and elite athleticism, the easiest way to get someone the ball is to just hand it to them. That was our philosophy."
Purdue made Mostert a running back, pairing him with Akeem Hunt as half of a blazing-fast tandem at the position.
Again, though, Mostert was fast, but raw. The "learning curve," as Williams called it, was real, and opportunities were few.
"He never complained, not one time," Elliott said of his experience with Mostert. "I remember joking to him when I saw him run, 'How come you're not playing? I don't know anything about football, but I know speed.'
"But he never complained. He just took his track opportunity and made the most of it."
Since, that's been Mostert's M.O.
After a senior season in which modest opportunity did come — he got 93 carries and 18 catches, mostly on screens, and scored three touchdowns for a three-win team — Mostert became the posterboy for special teams value in the NFL. It got his foot through a lot of doors, albeit sometimes for not very long.
It did afford Mostert, though, chances to gain experience at running back, to learn — albeit sometimes briefly — from lots of different coaches and lots of different running backs, and ultimately find his place.
"I think he's had the right mentality, and he probably had the right makeup to get through some of these things," Williams said. "That adversity he probably felt in college in having multiple positions, that's probably helped him as he's been on multiple teams. Things don't always go the way you want them to. To his credit, he's fought through it, persevered and had success."
That's the Mostert Jenkins remembers from high school, the even-keeled surfer with the sparkling GPA who worked late at Burger King on weeknights, but was always present for the start of 7 a.m. workouts the following morning.
Williams says he remembers Mostert at Purdue as the player who'd do "whatever he had to do to be on the field."
To Elliott, Mostert's approach stood out.
"Always with a smile on his face, just an unbelievable personality and demeanor," Elliott said. "I'm happy as hell for him."
Everyone remembers Mostert's speed, speed that Purdue's track coach suggests could have developed to an Olympic level had track been his sole focus.
"The way he ran he almost looked like he wasn't moving fast, and I see the same thing on the football field," Elliott said. "He just seems to glide, not the frequency (of stride), but explosive stride length. He's covering a lot of ground and just running away from people. It looks like slow motion because he's just so powerful.
"He has world-class speed, no doubt about it."
Always has.
"He can flat out fly," Jenkins said, "but his running style is so effortless you kind of get lulled into that false sense of security as a defender that, 'Hey this is the angle I'm going to take to make that tackle,' but then once you get to your junction point, he's gone, beyond you.
"He'd just accelerate through people. He doesn't look like he's moving, but he's moving."
Sometimes, whether it's been coming out of the blocks running a 100-meter dash or establishing himself in the NFL, it's taken Mostert time to hit his stride.
But once he does, the results have been overwhelming.
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