Blake Traylor

Jaleel McLaughlin ran 28 yards into the end zone tonight as the Cleveland Browns beat the Pittsburgh Steelers 27-24. His mother Tonya lost her factory job when he was 12. The Ford Focus is where they ended up. His grandmother had already died of a heart attack while the family was living in her house. They stayed in motels before that. They stayed with relatives. Tonya was raising him and his siblings by herself, and then she had to take work in Arkansas and was apart from her sons for two years. They got back together right as he started high school. He was good. At Forest Hills High School in Marshville, North Carolina he won a state title in basketball, two more in track, and averaged 8.4 yards a carry as a senior running back. Almost nobody offered him a scholarship. He is 5 foot 7. The few schools that called mostly wanted to move him to defensive back. Notre Dame College took him. Division II. South Euclid, Ohio, ten miles east of Cleveland. He ran for 302 yards in his first college game. A Division II record. Then 2,421 yards as a freshman. Then 2,316 yards and 33 touchdowns as a sophomore. He transferred to Youngstown State and kept going. He finished with 8,166 yards and 79 touchdowns. Read that again. Nobody in the history of college football, in any division, has ever run for more yards than Jaleel McLaughlin. He went undrafted in 2023. The Denver Broncos signed him off the street. He played all 17 games as a rookie. Here is the part that gets me. Notre Dame College, where he set those records, closed its doors for good on May 2, 2024. The school does not exist anymore. There is no team to go back to. On September 1 of this year the Cleveland Browns put him on their practice squad. On September 15 they moved him up to the active roster after Dylan Sampson got hurt. Tonight, ten miles from a campus that is gone, in a three point game against the team Cleveland hates most, he took it 28 yards and scored. "Have a goal, have a dream," he said when he broke the record. "Don't let nobody tell you what you can be, no matter the circumstance, no matter how small, no matter where you come from." Be honest about where he stands. He is a backup. He went from Denver to a practice squad to a roster spot that only opened because somebody else got injured. Next September is not promised to him either. But he has already done the hardest thing he will ever do, and it had nothing to do with football. A kid who slept in a Ford Focus is playing on Thursday night in prime time.