THIS DIDN’T HAPPEN BY ACCIDENT
A sack, strip, scoop, pick and score in one half? That might be Khalil Mack’s greatest 30 minutes of football, but the work began many years ago.
Khalil Mack is in the locker room at Halas Hall, just 13 days after the Bears acquired him from the Raiders, and he’s itching to leave for his next task.
He’ll be stopped three times by different media groups before he can go back to his preparation for Monday night’s game against the Seahawks, and while he’s polite and quietly engaging during the sessions, it’s apparent he has bigger things on his mind.
But for a few minutes, as he considers where that drive and work ethic originated, he stops to tell a story about his father.
Sandy Mack Sr. has long worked with troubled youth in Florida, and he let his three sons know he didn’t want them to follow that path. He and Yolanda Mack, a teacher who is soft-spoken like her son Khalil, made sure their boys attended church, stayed on top of their schoolwork and helped out when needed.
Mack remembers his father cleaning the floors at a juvenile delinquent program he supervised, not because it was his job but because he wanted to make sure it was done right.
“My father instilled those hard-working values,” Mack said. “When you do something, do it right the first time. … When you’re talking about hard-working, when you go out of your way to mop floors and strip them and do all those things, it’s kind of like, ‘Dang.’ And he made us help him do it.”
Mack’s parents were present Sept. 2 when the Bears introduced to Chicago the outside linebacker they had signed to a six-year, $141 million extension, and they beamed as Mack, 27, spoke of working to be the best in the NFL to live up to that contract.
Coaches along Mack’s path, from the University at Buffalo to the Raiders to the Bears, have accounts of his work to get there too.
Lou Tepper has a story about Mack and a racquetball match, a bragging-rights tale about beating a future All-Pro linebacker that one simply doesn’t let fade from memory.
But fast forward first to Sunday, five years after Tepper was Mack’s defensive coordinator at Buffalo, when the former Illinois head coach received a phone call from his daughter that he had better turn on the Bears-Packers game.
Tepper didn’t start watching until the second half, so he missed the newest Bear’s strip-sack and interception, but he saw a play that was textbook Mack.
On Randall Cobb’s winning 75-yard touchdown, Mack was rushing Aaron Rodgers when he saw the pass coming, turned and chased Cobb all the way to the end zone, making a last effort to tackle him at the goal line. He didn’t, but the play struck Tepper.
Tepper had seen it before, including in a 2012 game against Pittsburgh in which Mack, then a junior, pursued running back Rushel Shell after a screen pass, catching him 41 yards later at the 6-yard line. Buffalo held Pitt to a field goal on the drive.
“Once he did that, he was convinced that pursuit creates big plays,” Tepper said. “Once he is convinced that what you’re teaching him is a benefit to himself or a team, he buys in. He will be a tremendous asset to his defense because they’re going to see the best player on their defense pursue hard and play hard.”
Over two seasons together at Buffalo, Tepper saw in Mack a player with great explosion; with natural strength that allowed him to win blocks even before he always played with a correct base; and with an awareness of the ball and how to strip it unlike any player he had coached. Mack owns the NCAA FBS career record with 16 forced fumbles.
Tepper has guided many good ones, including the Illinois quartet of Kevin Hardy, Simeon Rice, Dana Howard and John Holecek, some of whom asked Tepper when Mack was in college if he could have played with them.
The answer was a definitive yes — he finished second to Alabama’s C.J. Mosley in Butkus Award voting his senior season — and Tepper always had the sense that Mack’s light recruitment out of high school fueled a desire to prove college teams had made a mistake in overlooking him.
Perhaps it was that competitive fire that made Mack perk up upon hearing Tepper was a rarely beaten racquetball player. He asked his coach if he could beat real athletes, and when Tepper answered yes, the challenge was on.
By the time the match was over, Mack’s T-shirt was drenched. Tepper’s was dry. Tepper’s experience won out in three games.
“Anybody who plays racquetball for an extended period of time will have a story about some old guy who sat in the middle of the court and made you run,” Tepper said. “He knew after game one that his only chance was to outlast me and hope I wasn’t conditioned enough to play three games. He knew he was a goner, and he was very humble. … He wasn’t (angry). It was, ‘Hey, I’m going to get you on the court again.’ ”
Mack cracked up when he heard Tepper, now 73, still tells the story, but there was no denying it.
“He was killing me, man,” Mack said. “That also taught me a huge lesson, being around him and understanding the wisdom, understanding the mental side of playing the game can affect how you play physically. Just outsmarting me and knowing where to place the ball so I couldn’t hit. This guy is 60-plus, and he had me running into walls and was outrunning me. It was a great experience.”
Robert Wimberly also has a bragging-rights story.
He’s the recruiter who helped lure a future All-American to commit first to Liberty, then an FCS program, and then follow him to FBS Buffalo when Wimberly was hired there under coach Turner Gill.
Wimberly figures Mack might have received more FBS offers if he hadn’t played only his senior season at Fort Pierce Westwood, after many schools already had filled their scholarship spots. Mack started high school focused on basketball but suffered a patellar tendon injury that sidelined him until he took up football in his final year.
Wimberly doesn’t take credit for the foresight that Mack would become as special as he is today, but he did notice Mack’s athleticism and natural abilities to bend, sink and change directions.
Mack’s high school coach, Waides Ashmon, warned Wimberly that in their weekly recruiting conversations, Mack might not talk a lot, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t interested. When Wimberly visited Mack’s family, he better realized the type of person he was courting because “you just know he was raised the right way,” a refrain heard from several of his coaches.
“(My parents had) a huge impact,” Mack said. “They kept me in church, kept me out of the streets, especially my father. … Seeing him being around those type of youth growing up and understanding he didn’t want that for us and making sure he was there for me and my brothers, it was huge.”
Mack’s promise on the field was evident to Wimberly from his first scrimmage at Buffalo. Playing middle linebacker, he surged into the backfield “quick as a hiccup” to hit running back and friend Branden Oliver.
But coaches decided he needed more time to learn the game, and they had him redshirt during his freshman year. That’s when Wimberly first appreciated his work ethic. He remembers Mack sitting across from him during a one-onone meeting and telling him, “Coach, I’m gonna get it.”
“He always had that confidence,” Wimberly said. “It wasn’t like arrogant. It was just like: ‘I’m going to put in the time. Whatever I need to do — if I’ve got to work out, study film — I’m going to learn. I’m going to get it, Coach.’ ”
Mack said he first set a goal to play in the NFL when he saw Buffalo running back James Starks get drafted. It opened his eyes to the possibility and gave him something more to work toward. Proving wrong the colleges that didn’t recruit him wasn’t bad motivation either.
“One of my best friends got recruited to go to Miami, and another one went to South Florida,” Mack said. “You’re talking about two big schools in Florida, and I had to go all the way up to Buffalo. I was like, ‘OK, I’ve got to put in some more work.’ That’s just the way it’s been ever since.”
J■■■ ethro Franklin lets out a quick chuckle when asked for a story about Mack during his three years guiding him as the Raiders defensive line coach. He knows his without hesitation: a Week 14 matchup against the Broncos in 2015. Over 22 minutes of game time in the second half, Mack sacked Brock Osweiler five times, including a strip-sack in the end zone, to help the Raiders to a 15-12 victory. He tied the franchise single-game record for sacks set by Howie Long in 1983.
Franklin said he could tell that Mack “was in that zone.” “I really couldn’t believe they didn’t chip block,” Mack said. “I felt like I got lucky and I was in a rhythm. The corners and safeties, everybody was playing lights out. Coverage and rush work together, and it was huge. Yeah, that was a good day.”
It was hardly the only big game of Mack’s four seasons as aRaider,duringwhichherecorded40 1⁄2 sacks.In2016,the year he was named NFL Defensive Player of the Year, he had a sack, interception, forced fumble, fumble recovery and touchdown against the Panthers. He topped that feat Sunday by doing it all in the first half against the Packers.
But Mack isn’t willing yet to point out one game he is most proud of in his career.
“I’m still playing,” he said. “The game I’m most proud of (will be) the Super Bowl.”
Franklin is helping the Seahawks prepare for the Bears this week as their assistant defensive line coach, and he can tell them Mack has an “unbelievable motor,” a relentless “‘I shall not be denied’ attitude” and a determination that means he’ll be absolutely prepared for his second game as a Bear.
Mack said he first understood the value of preparation in 2014, his first season after the Raiders drafted him with the No. 5 pick. It was early in a game week, perhaps a Tuesday, and former All-Pro defensive end Justin Tuck was calling out every play coming from the scout-team offense.
“This was our first day studying the other team — supposedly — and he knew everything they were going to do based on alignment, hand placement, different things,” Mack said. “He opened up my eyes to a whole other side of the game as far as studying and knowing what it is out there.”
That preparation, and the collection of “wow” moments he provided for the Raiders, prompted a familiar reaction from Franklin when he learned the Raiders, under new coach Jon Gruden, had traded Mack.
“I couldn’t believe it, like everybody else,” Franklin said. “It was unbelievable. But I’m happy for him. He definitely deserves it. He worked his tail off.”
B■■■ randon Staley has had only two weeks to gather a good story about Mack, but that has meant more hours preparing Mack for his first two games than the Bears outside linebackers coach can keep track of. Just how many hours? “My wife would know a lot better than I would,” Staley said. “Maybe text her.”
In Mack’s first week, with seven days to prepare for the Packers, they were up around 6 a.m. to work before team meetings and sometimes stayed until 10 p.m. First Mack had to learn the way the Bears want to play their technique, then how he fit into their scheme, then details about the Packers, such as the way their tackles set and their formations and tendencies.
They went to the Walter Payton Center privately so Mack could move through the details he had been studying in his playbook and on film.
“Coach Staley definitely had me doing overtime,” Mack said. “It’s been fun, though, man. I've been ready for the grind, been waiting five months to feel the grind.”
Staley called him “vibrant,” and he wasn’t necessarily surprised Mack was critical of his Sunday performance, even though he was the first player since Lawrence Taylor in 1982 to record the aforementioned stat line in one half.
“He takes his craft really, really seriously,” Staley said. “It was funny, in the first one-on-one pass-rush rep he took in practice, just the detail he has for his performance, really criticizing himself for a performance that maybe all of us would judge as a win. He’d say, ‘No, I just missed his wrist by a little bit.’ Or, ‘Hey, I was late off the ball.’ That’s what makes him unique.”
Staley thought Mack turned in “about as impressive a performance as you could expect from a guy who got here seven days ago.” He played 70 percent of the defensive snaps, and coach Matt Nagy said the Bears hope he can build on that performance Monday against the Seahawks.
Staley is understandably excited about the work to get there, and Mack says he is, too, starting with the challenge of facing Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson.
Perhaps the bigger challenge will be to keep driving forward even after his big payday. Staley seems to think Mack has that will.
“This guy has come from humble beginnings, and he has really earned everything he has gotten,” Staley said. “He knows what he’s capable of, and what makes him great is his will to get all of that out of himself.”