What aided Eagles rookie Quinyon Mitchell in becoming a Super Bowl champion? Fruit farming.

Quinyon Mitchell’s football career ended in 2019 when he graduated from high school and did not have a college to attend.

He once planned to play at Florida, but his grades dipped as a senior at Williston (Fla.) High School, and the Gators backed off. He tried to improve his academic standing that summer but fell short of qualifying for college.

That could have been it.

But Mitchell spent his summers picking watermelons in the Florida heat. He wasn’t done yet.

“Hard work is in his genes,” said Mitchell’s father, Quentin.

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Mitchell’s grandfather, Bill, contracts workers every summer to pick watermelons at the farms surrounding Williston, the tiny three-stoplight town where Mitchell grew up.

From March to August, he could be found lifting watermelons as large as 80 pounds and heaving them into trucks.

“It’s very hard work, but it’s even better than working out,” his father said. “It’s a total-body workout. That helps build those leg muscles and build a body. It builds endurance. It’s hot out there.”

So, no, Mitchell’s career didn’t end in 2019. It simply paused for a season. He stayed home, improved his grades, landed a scholarship to Toledo, blossomed into a first-round pick, and finished his rookie season with the Eagles last Sunday as a Super Bowl champion.

It took hard work to go from an unwanted high schooler to world champion. But that was nothing new for Mitchell.

“It’s mentally and physically challenging,” his father said of picking watermelons. “Once you do that, football is a breeze.”

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Mitchell’s grandfather still works on the farm as a contractor, hiring help to pick the fields.

“He’ll work a young guy in the dirt,” Quentin Mitchell said. “He’s 74 and going strong.”

He paid his grandson about $75 a day — not bad for a teenager in the summer. The farmers planted the seeds, older folks cut the vines when the fruit ripened, and Mitchell and other teenagers hauled the watermelon away for 10 to 12 hours a day.

“That’s what they do in the summertime. Watermelon and whatever,” his grandfather said. “We’d be out there all day. He’s a hard worker. He’s always been a hard worker. Ever since he was a young man. He’d be right here with me. That was good for teenagers back in the day. Now, you can’t get these kids to come out of the house.”

It was hard for Mitchell to catch the attention of major programs since he lived in a small town. But that changed when he ran the 40-yard dash in 4.36 seconds at a camp in Georgia on a wet track. Three former NFL head coaches — Lovie Smith, Herm Edwards, and Lane Kiffin — offered him scholarships to their college programs. That’s when his father knew his son had something.

“That let me know that he had NFL potential,” his father said.

The University of Florida, 20 miles from Williston, swooped in, and Mitchell was in. But his grades weren’t there. A former honor roll student, Mitchell struggled academically as his football career took off. It seemed he was attending camps every weekend. The busy schedule plus the new attention hurt him in the classroom.

“It’s a small town, and so many people were coming at him from so many directions because we never had a star as big as this magnitude in this town,” Quentin Mitchell said.

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But Toledo — to which he verbally committed earlier in high school before changing his mind — stayed with Mitchell. The Rockets don’t play in a major conference like the schools Mitchell thought he would attend, but it was an opportunity.

He arrived in the fall of 2020, played as a freshman, and excelled as a sophomore. He had a huge game at Notre Dame when Toledo nearly upset the Fighting Irish, and the kid who once picked watermelons suddenly was a known commodity in college football. Three years later, he was the first defensive back drafted.

“With [name, image, and likeness], they were throwing money at our family, and he stayed at Toledo,” his father said. “That loyalty speaks volumes about the young man he is.”

Mitchell grew up surrounded by farmland but dreamed of playing in the Super Bowl. His father started a youth football program 15 years ago to give him a team to play for and then watched Quinyon and his brother, Quintavious, enact their dreams after practice. It was an obsession.

“They would get the ball, and they’d be in the house playing on their knees after homework, and he would emulate that he was playing in the Super Bowl,” Quentin Mitchell said. “He would be the player, the coach, the announcer, and the referee. I used to tell my other son that there’s no way you can win. He’s everything.”

When his sons played for the Williston Raiders, Quentin Mitchell told his sons to believe they were the best, as they could not become the best without first thinking it. Quinyon’s father and mother, Mashona Solomon, a retired nurse, made his lofty dreams feel reachable.

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“Even now, I tell the kids that I coach that if my son is standing in front of you, you should feel like you can score a touchdown,” Quentin Mitchell said. “You have to believe in yourself.”

Mitchell told his father last Saturday in New Orleans that the Eagles would handle the Chiefs. And then he was in the stands inside the Caesars Superdome to watch his son’s vision come true.

“When he’s in the room with a bunch of people, you might not even hear him speak,” Quentin Mitchell said. “But when he puts that helmet on, that’s his superhero outfit. He turns into Quintanamo Bay. He turns into the trash talker. Other than that, you won’t hear him say two words. He puts the Batman suit on or the Superman suit on, and he becomes a phenomenal athlete. But just being around him every day, you’d think he’s just an average person.”

Mitchell, along with fellow rookie Cooper DeJean, helped transform the Eagles’ defense into the NFL’s top-ranked unit. Pro Football Focus graded Mitchell and DeJean — who comes from an even smaller town — as the top rookie cornerbacks this season.

And there he was in the Super Bowl, helping to shut out Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs until the final seconds of the third quarter. It was a blowout, thanks to a lockdown defense and a rookie cornerback who made it to football’s grandest stage with a work ethic built from fruitful summers.

“That’s where the perseverance and the dedication comes from,” his father said. “In the country, when you want things, we just don’t give it to you. That’s how my dad did me. You have to work for it. It’s been a journey for him. He persevered through all the ups and downs that he had over the years.”