‘Mauler in the run game’
Moments before halftime in San Francisco’s divisional round playoff game against Dallas in January, Mike Mcglinchey went viral.
Rarely does an offensive lineman rocket around the internet for positive reasons, and this was no exception.
Sliding up the field to try to slow Cowboys Allpro Micah Parsons, Mcglinchey forfeited just enough balance in search of speed that Parsons got his right arm under Mcglinchey’s left armpit and sent him airborne. For many on social media, the sum total of the moment amounted to reacting to the video clip or still image freezing 80 inches and 310 pounds of right tackle essentially horizontal with the ground.
Back at his alma mater, though, the moment resonated in a different way. Notre Dame offensive line coach Harry Heistand made sure of it.
Just weeks from announcing his retirement after four decades of coaching, Hiestand showed his pupils the play. Then he showed the 49ers punching home a fourthquarter touchdown run behind Mcglinchey’s double-team block in their 1912 victory.
“That’s the mental toughness it takes in the NFL,” Heistand told The Post. “You’re going to have bad plays because you’re blocking the best athletes in the world. People can take those little clips and run them back and forth and critique a guy all day, which is total (garbage). But the measure of a player — the measure of any of us — is when you get down and something doesn’t go your way, how do you handle it?
“I showed (Notre Dame’s linemen) those two plays and I said, ‘This is reality. This happens in life. It happens in football. You get knocked down. What are you going to do about it?’ Mike, later in the game, they rip a gap play right behind him for a touchdown in a playoff game. Everybody wants to talk about that play, but to me the measure of him is the next play because those plays happen to everyone.”
Mcglinchey’s 49ers, of course, saw their season end the next week in the NFC title game against Philadelphia when rookie Brock Purdy suffered an elbow injury and they finally ran out of quarterback options. Before that, San Francisco had won 12 straight.
Now, after five years in San Francisco, he’s on to the next chapter of his career, agreeing last week to a five-year contract with the Broncos, worth up to $87.5 million, that makes him one of the highestpaid right tackles in the NFL.
He provides what new head coach Sean Payton wants on the field in Denver — mental toughness, run game production and playoff experience — and will likely be one of the pillars in building what Payton promised would be, “a completely different type of culture.”
Mcglinchey is less diplomatic when a ball carrier is looking for room to work behind him.
“Him being a mauler in the run game, that’s staple Mike Mcglinchey,” Bivin said.
It’s been his on-field calling card for years. He turned into one of the NFL’S best right tackles under Shanahan and offensive line coach Chris Foerster.
“’Rock solid’ is the way I’d describe him,” former Notre Dame offensive lineman Mike Golic Jr. said.