Before the Super Bowl two years ago, 49ers scouts and coaches had “Mobile-to-Miami” T-shirts printed up—a slogan coined at a dinner at the previous January’s Senior Bowl in Alabama. San Francisco’s staff was coaching in that game, an assignment that routinely goes to the league’s highest-drafting (and, by record, worst) teams. So given where they were, making it to South Florida 12 months later, for a very different assignment, on the other end of the spectrum, would be remarkable.
Once it actually happened? For the guys who were on hand, it was worth commemorating.
But something else happened at that Senior Bowl, too. That week didn’t just pave the way for Mobile-to-Miami. It also cleared a path from Alabama to Los Angeles. To Los Angeles for Sunday’s NFC title game. And maybe back to Los Angeles for Super Bowl LVI.
