Before the Super Bowl two years ago, 49ers scouts and coaches had “Mobile-to-Miami” T-shirts printed up—a slogan coined at a dinner at the previous January’s Senior Bowl in Alabama. San Francisco’s staff was coaching in that game, an assignment that routinely goes to the league’s highest-drafting (and, by record, worst) teams. So given where they were, making it to South Florida 12 months later, for a very different assignment, on the other end of the spectrum, would be remarkable.
Once it actually happened? For the guys who were on hand, it was worth commemorating.
But something else happened at that Senior Bowl, too. That week didn’t just pave the way for Mobile-to-Miami. It also cleared a path from Alabama to Los Angeles. To Los Angeles for Sunday’s NFC title game. And maybe back to Los Angeles for Super Bowl LVI.
It was back there, in Alabama, in January 2019, where Niners special teams coach Richard Hightower rode the early shuttle, traveling by van, every day from the Senior Bowl hotel to Ladd-Peebles Stadium. The ride was primarily for guys set to participate in kicking-game work before practice. Kickers. Punters. Long snappers. And lower-level draft picks and prospective undrafted free agents who’d need to excel in that area to make the league.
So those guys were in that van with Hightower. Them, and a South Carolina receiver who was a to go inside the top 50 picks or so, who was on time for the shuttle every day. He’d been a great returner as a Gamecock but didn’t really need to prove it to anyone on the Niners’ staff, or any of the other teams there.
Later in the week, Hightower asked him why he was on those early shuttles.
“Man, I just like the ball in my hands,” Deebo Samuel said, flashing his trademark smile.
That moment wasn’t the only memorable one the Niners staff had that week with Samuel, who San Francisco would eventually draft at No. 36. The offensive coaches how he worked on his route running with them. They were impressed with how he saw the game for a young guy. They also saw his playing strength first-hand, something they wanted to prioritize in their receivers going into Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch’s third year in charge.
But the moment did encapsulate how the team build in San Francisco has happened.
It was one in a series that showed Samuel was the sort of football-obsessed player they were looking for. It also showed his desire to fill every role he possibly could for whatever team he wound up going to. And it did take a while for all of that to sort itself out—he was more of a gadget weapon for the 2019 49ers team that made it to Miami.
Two years later, that picture for San Francisco is coming to completion, with Samuel as one of the most important players on another championship-contending team. So for him, it’s been Mobile-to-Los Angeles, and maybe twice. For the Niners, it has been, too.
