‘He inspired me to be what I am today’

WILLISTON, Fla. — Quintana Mitchell aimed her phone at the football field, focusing the camera on No. 2 in the red jersey as he weaved through defenders on another Friday night. Quinyon Mitchell — the rookie cornerback who helped transform the Eagles’ Super Bowl-champion defense — was then a high school running back known for highlight-worthy touchdown runs. And his aunt captured it all from the stands.

Once home,she made screenshots of the videos she captured, detailing her nephew’s plays like a coach breaking down game tape. Here was a still of Quinyon lined up in the backfield, and a shot of his receiving the handoff. The next photo was Quinyon breaking through the defensive line, and then a photo of his dancing away from a tackler. The final screen capture showed his scoring the touchdown.

Quintana sent the series of photos to Quinyon’s father, Quentin Mitchell, who was serving an eight-year state prison sentence for drug charges in a crime he still says he did not commit. Inmates were not allowed to receive videos, so Quintana figured that a series of photos was the best way for Quentin to watch his son’s games.

Quentin Mitchell taught his son to play football and created a youth program to fuel his passion, but then was incarcerated while Quinyon played high school and college ball. He was released from prison last April, three days after the Eagles drafted his son with the 22nd pick in the first round.

Quentin hadmissed his son’s climb to the NFL, but his sister made sure the father never missed a big play.

“His dad was the first person to believe in him,” said Quinyon’s mother, Mashona Solomon.

Quinyon spoke to his father every day while he was in prison and often drove to visit him. Quentin was no longer home, but he never left his son’s life.

“He was away, but it was like he wasn’t away,” Quintana Mitchell said.

The road to last month’s Super Bowl was challenging. Quinyon struggled to attract college recruiters to this tiny, rural hometown only 20 miles from the University of Florida. Once he did, he lost his scholarship there months before graduating from Williston High School when his grades dipped. Quinyon took additional classes and became academically eligible for college, but it was too late to play that fall.

So he missed a year of football but refused to give up on his dream of reaching the NFL even when things seemed dim. Quinyon latched on with the University of Toledo, became a star, and was the school’s first first-round NFL draft pick in 30 years. He had six-figure offers to play at bigger places, but he stayed loyal to the coaches who gave him a chance when everyone else backed away.

No obstacle would stop Quinyon Mitchell, 23, from reaching the NFL. His father, who helped spark the journey, watched it unfold from prison.

“I’m just so thankful for the dream he had,” Quinyon said. “He inspired me to be what I am today. He was always present in my life, giving me good advice. He was always there for me. He couldn’t be there physically, but he was there mentally and spiritually.”

Quentin was sometimes imprisoned more than four hours from Williston, but Keith Hardee was always ready to give Quinyon a ride to see his father.

“I felt like he would do that for my son,” said Hardee, who calls Quentin his brother. “For his kids, I’m there. Hey, if he wanted to see his daddy, I was going to take him there and make it happen.”

Hardee would pass the time on those long drives to the prison by talking with Quinyon about his father, who was charged with selling cocaine in July 2015 and convicted in May 2016. Yes, Quentin was in prison. But Hardee told Quinyon that the crime did not define his father.

“Don’t let anyone tell you about your dad,” Hardee said.

Years earlier, Quentin and Hardee sat on the porch after Quinyon’s football team was overpowered by a squad from Gainesville, home to the Florida Gators and about 140,000 more people than Williston’s 2,900. Quentin could not shake the loss. He needed to find a way for the kids from the town he describes as a big neighborhood to compete against those from the city.

So he started his own team. The Williston Raiders didn’t charge children to participate, and Quentin drove around town recruiting any player he could find. They had a team — “they had the bare minimum of players,” said league commissioner Quennedda Carter — but the Raiders needed equipment. They were told that they could score some gear in Miami, which was five hours away. Mitchell and Hardee drove there — only to discover that they didn’t have enough money.

“I said, ‘Why did we come here? We don’t have any money,’” Hardee said.

They drove back to Williston, sat on the porch, and regrouped. Hardee figured that was it. But Quentin wasn’t done. His son loved football too much for him to give up. Gerard Warren, a friend who was the No. 3 overall pick in the 2001 NFL draft and played 11 seasons at defensive tackle, stopped by and asked what they were doing.

They told him how they needed equipment for the kids. Warren had just returned from the casino and had won $5,000.

“You guys can have it,” he said.

The friends headed to Miami with the cash and made it back that evening for practice.

“When we opened that truck and those kids saw those new helmets, you can never take back that feeling,” Hardee said.

Hardee walked with Quinyon into prison before stepping back and allowing the son to be alone with his father. Quentin treated those sessions like a news reporter, asking his son questions he would hear after games. Quinyon, then a teenager, thought it was crazy. But his father had a plan.

Hey Quinyon Mitchell, you ran for two touchdowns and had two interceptions and eight tackles this game. How were you able to put on such a classic performance? What do you think about the team next week? What college are you going to?

Quinyon told his father when he was 11 years old that he was going to reach the NFL. It may have seemed a lofty dream to reach from a three-stoplight town that his high school coach once called “a dot on the map.”

Quentin believed in his son’s dream and never missed a chance to help prepare him for it.

“I knew he was going to be successful,” Quentin said. “I knew his success was to come. One of my prayers was, ‘Lord, if I have to go through this situation, then remove all obstacles from my kids.’”

Quinyon was entering his freshman year of high school when his father was sentenced after a jury found him guilty. The kid who loved football lost his passion, as the game was a connection between him and his father. But Quentin told his son that he had to keep pushing.

“That was probably one of the most difficult times of his life,” Quentin said. “He’s always been a father’s son. I was always his coach, and that almost tore him down.”

Quinyon kept playing and his family rallied to keep him on track while his father was away. His mother worked 12-hour shifts as a registered nurse to support her four children. He would go days without seeing his mother because she was always working. That’s how Quinyon said he learned what a work ethic was.

“It was very hard, but that was the only way I could pay the bills,” Solomon said. “It was rough, and he had so many obstacles and so much adversity. But he always persevered. He always gave it his all. It’s a blessing for him to be where he is right now.”

Quinyon said his grandmother Marilyn Johnson always had his back and was hard on him when she needed to be. Everyone has a Mimi, his sister Uniquia said, but “not our Mimi.”

“Whatever we needed,” his sister said. “There’s nothing we can’t pick up our phone and call Mimi for. She has it.”

His other grandparents, Bill and Linda Mitchell, called every morning to wake him up for school and then drove him to Williston High. Quentin contacted his sister from prison to make sure his son had a tuxedo for the prom and Quintana assured him that it was already ordered.

Everyone believed that Quinyon would make his NFL dream come true, so they all played a part to make sure he was not derailed. When Quinyon got there, he was even prepared for interviews.

“It takes a village,” Quinyon said. “The love and support that everyone gave me motivated me to do better.”

The Raiders washed cars, sold doughnuts, cooked barbecue, and held helmets for donations at busy intersections to make sure that every child could afford to play.

Quentin even gave rides to practice, turning his GMC Yukon into the team bus. He would pick up five kids, drop them off at practice, and then pick up five more until the whole team was at the field.

“He would see kids playing in the yard, pull up, and say, ‘Hey. Go tell your mom you’re going to play football,’” Hardee said. “That’s how he recruited a lot of kids.”

The team did not have a tackling sled, but Hardee’s mother did have a Ford Focus. They drove the car onto the field and told five players to push it. They would move the car five yards, and then another five kids pushed on the bumper.

“Me and his daddy would be sitting in the car listening to music while they were pushing the car,” Hardee said. “We didn’t have any equipment. We had nothing.”

The Raiders made do with what they had. Quentin stored old cleats in his house so they could be used for the next season and filled a bedroom with yard markers and pylons. His house was overtaken by a youth football program. That was fine. The Raiders soon grew enough to support four teams. Quentin’s dream worked.

Most of the players had never left Williston before they traveled across Florida with the Raiders, playing in places like Daytona Beach and Orlando. The team became nationally ranked, but the program was more than football. Quentin and Hardee often made trips to school if their players were in trouble and taught their kids to dream big, asking them on road trips what they wanted to be when they grew up.

“They’re rolling off what they want to be,” Quentin said. “One of them said they wanted to be a truck driver. I said, ‘No. Own your own truck company.’ Whatever their dream was, I would expand them. I wanted them to know that what they saw in their town wasn’t it.

“Then my son, he was about 11 years old, said he wanted to be a football player. I asked him again, and he said, ‘I want to be a football player, Daddy.’ I said, ‘Well, when you make it, make sure you come back to be a role model for the kids.’ And that’s what he has become.”

The program could have folded when Quentin was arrested, but Hardee, Quintana, and others made sure the Raiders kept playing. Williston, they said, needed the Raiders.

“I didn’t want Quentin’s dream to die, his vision to die,” Quintana said. “It meant so much to Quinyon and these children around here.”

Quintana set up her living room on Saturdays with a TV for the Florida Gators and a laptop for her nephew’s Toledo Rockets. By then, her brother was able to receive videos, so Quintana filmed Quinyon’s college games for his father to watch in prison. You weren’t supposed to send video off the TV, so Quintana tried to aim her phone where the TV would not take up the whole screen.

“I don’t think I was supposed to be doing it, but it’s over now. Guilty as charged if that’s a crime,” Quintana said. “I didn’t want him to miss anything just because he was away. We’re still family. We’re still blood. That’s my brother, and I love him.”

It was how Quentin watched his son blossom into a college football star, a can’t-miss cornerback who was invited to Detroit last April for the NFL draft. Quentin could not be there, but he and the others on his prison floor were allowed to watch the draft on TV.

“Of course you want to be there,” Quentin said. “But the joy in the moment, nothing can steal that. That was the moment where everything I had been through was now A-OK.”

Quinyon’s mother and grandmother were with him in Detroit, and his aunt hosted a draft party back in Williston. It was supposed to be a small thing for family, but it soon felt like the whole town was there. It wasn’t just Mitchell’s draft night. It belonged to Williston.

That’s why the streets were crowded last Saturday afternoon for a parade honoring Quinyon Mitchell. Everyone in the small town wore green, and Eagles banners hung outside houses. They always loved the Gators in Williston, and now Quinyon Mitchell has taught them to love the Birds.

He sat on the roof of an SUV as it slowly drove down the town’s main road before finishing at the park where the Raiders play their games.

The kid who used to sit in the house for two days if the Raiders lost a game was celebrated with a cookout at the field where his dream began. Everyone was there — from his elementary school teachers to his high school coaches to the kids who play now for the Raiders. There was even a casket inscribed with “Rest In Peace Kansas City Chiefs.” This was how Williston celebrated the Super Bowl.

“I want to thank the community,” Quinyon told the crowd. “If you gave me the ride to the store or you bought me something. Anything. I remember the little things. I’m thankful. We’re a community.”

Quentin returned home from prison in time to see his son emerge as one of the NFL’s elite cornerbacks. He is coaching the Raiders again and owns his own trucking company.

He was with his son in New Orleans last month in the Eagles’ hotel the night before Super Bowl LIX. Quinyon was so confident about the game that his father knew the Chiefs didn’t have a chance. And he was in the stands when his son helped the Eagles win. The kid who told everyone that he would become an NFL player was now an NFL champion. This time, no one needed to film the game for his father.

“What can top that?” Quentin said. “People play their whole careers and never reach the Super Bowl. He won it in his first season. I think we’re all still processing that moment.”