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NFL
Former NFL quarterback Ryan Mallett made an impact in a number of places during his life, but he had just begun to find his true calling before it all ended, those close to him say.
The 35-year-old, who tragically passed away on Tuesday in a drowning accident, had arrived at a genuine passion when he began coaching football at White Hall High School in a 5,000-person town in Arkansas.
“He’d found his niche,” Casey Dick, who played quarterback at the University of Arkansas with Mallett, said to Yahoo Sports. “It was just all about the kids, coaching kids, helping kids and making an impact with them. Sometimes your niche finds you, and with Ryan, it definitely found him.”
Mallett, whose NFL-caliber skills were clear to Dick from the beginning, had a five-year career in the NFL with stints on the New England Patriots, Houston Texans and Baltimore Ravens.
He was a star signal-caller at the University of Arkansas, where he was a two-time All-SEC selection.
Mallett always knew his football destiny was to be a coach, though.
“Everyone in my family – my dad and his brothers – go by Coach,” he said to Whole Hog Sports
in May. “Coach Mallett, that’s all I’ve ever heard. I was going to be a coach.
“I started going to practices as a toddler. My earliest memory of a practice was going to one of my dad’s practices and I climbed on the blocking rack and got my head stuck. I was hanging from my head and they had to pull me out.”
In 2020, Mallett became the offensive coordinator at Mountain Home High School — a tiny city in Arkansas next to the Missouri border that had one of the worst football programs in the state.
After helping transform the Mountain Home program into a winner, he moved on to the head coaching role at White Hall in 2022.
“My job is to help shape and mold young people,” Mallett said. “This is the time a lot of them are finding out about themselves. I hope I can help them.”
Dick said it was very difficult to see Mallett’s life’s work come to a close so suddenly.
“It made him happy,” he said. “It was great to see him like that. It’s all just shocking.”
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