For three months, his bed was the back seat of a Ford Focus. As a teen, Jaleel McLaughlin went home to a McDonald’s parking lot, a five-star speedster living out of a four-door sedan.
“You know, there (have) been games where I’ve had a great game and I’d come home to nothing,” the undrafted Broncos rookie recalled Tuesday after practice at Dove Valley. “I’d come home to sleeping in the car.
“So that’s why … I don’t never get too high and never get too low. Because the unexpected can happen.”
Criminy, does this unexpected fly. If your heart doesn’t lambada whenever McLaughlin touches the rock, check your pulse.
If you’re not rooting for the kid to make this Broncos roster, especially once you hear his backstory, best check your soul.
“(My family) definitely motivates me a lot,” the free-agent tailback and returner out of Youngstown State said. “Even if, say, I might have a down day or, say, it’s early in the morning, I think about my family. I think about the sacrifice that they’re making to be able to come watch me play. They really look up to me. So I’m gonna keep working hard for them.”
McLaughlin’s first impression came as a small-build (5-foot-7, 187 pounds), small-school dude who was usually the first one in the building and last to leave.
But once the Broncos put the pads on for training camp, once the tackling went live, the former FCS star took off. Literally.
Took off several times per day, now that you mention it. Working with the second or third teams, McLaughlin became one of those “who the heck is that?” stars of 2023 training camp. He’d squirt out of a hole the way a wet bar of soap squirts from your grip, then juke a veteran (or two) out of their Underoos en route to the end zone.
The cool part: It translated instantly to the real thing. McLaughlin, whose name was infamously misspelled “McGlaughlin” on the first Broncos game jersey he ever wore, wasn’t just some practice hero, rushing for a combined 65 yards on 11 carries and two scores in a pair of preseason treks to Arizona and San Francisco.
The rookie set up one scoring drive against the 49ers with an explosive kick return. He finished it by taking a dump-off up the right boundary, exploding into daylight, then stopped and changed direction so quickly at the 2-yard line that a pair of San Fran defenders who were chasing him fell completely out of bounds, allowing him to basically walk in for 6.
“I haven’t even thought about (my roster status),” the rookie stressed Tuesday. “I’m gonna keep taking it day by day. No matter how big or how high or how low you get in life, you’ve never done enough, you know? So that’s why I’m taking it day by day. I know I sound like a broken record, but I’m just gonna keep working.”
As a collegian, McLaughlin tore up trees at Notre Dame. No, not that one. At Division II Notre Dame (Ohio) College, the scatback rushed for an NCAA-best 2,418 yards as a freshman in 2018 and another 2,316 as a sophomore. Transferring up to Youngstown, he piled up 1,139 rush yards in 2021 and another 1,588 more last fall, averaging 6.4 yards per carry at the FCS level. He clocked an unofficial 4.42 seconds in the 40-yard dash on his pro day.
When teams were too scared to draft him because of the size of his frame and his opposition, new Broncos running backs coach Lou Ayeni pounced. A “bunch” of NFL teams called, McLaughlin recalled, and the rook took notes as each franchise made its case.
Next to “Broncos,” he wrote this:
My favorite interview.
“So that’s what really led me to Denver,” McLaughlin explained. “(Coach Ayeni) and coach Sean Payton, not only (do they) teach you about football, but my first three days here, I had like a page and a half of just life-lesson notes. That’s how I knew I was in the right place.”
Life in North Carolina taught McLaughlin to seize the day — every sunrise, every challenge, every victory, however small — with arms wide open.
Raised by a single mom, layoffs forced the family to move from an apartment to a hotel to, for a few weeks, sleeping in a gray Ford Focus.
Even if Jaleel won the day, he couldn’t win some nights. And after a slow start to his junior season at Forest Hills (N.C.) High School, he vowed to never, ever give a golden opportunity any less than his best.
“I was like, ‘I don’t want to live life with any regrets,’” McLaughlin recalled. “If I fail out here on this football field, I want to be able to say I gave my 100%. So that’s why I started working like that.”
He’s never stopped. Sometimes the unexpected comes gift-wrapped in an orange-and-blue blur that nobody can catch. And if McLaughlin somehow doesn’t make the final cut, there oughta be a Congressional inquiry.
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