Barber: Raheem Mostert powers 49ers’ 37-20 win over Packers

SANTA CLARA

Every time I looked up Sunday, Raheem Mostert was on the move. He was running past the line of scrimmage without being touched, or running in and around downfield defenders as if he were a racecar in an old Atari game, or running into the end zone yet again.

“Man, it was crazy,” 49ers wide receiver Deebo Samuel said after his team’s 37-20 win against the Green Bay Packers. “It seemed like every run he did, he was about to score every time.”

When the dust had settled - dust created largely by Mostert’s heavily used cleats - he had carried the ball 29 times for 220 yards and four touchdowns, and the 49ers had powered their way into an appointment with the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl 54 in Miami. Only the Rams’ Eric Dickerson, against Dallas in January of 1986, ever ran for more yards in a postseason game. And no one - not Jim Brown or Emmitt Smith or Marcus Allen or any of the guys you can picture humiliating NFL defenses in grainy slow motion - ever had that many rushing yards plus that many touchdowns in the playoffs.

A game like that would be a huge deal for any player. Imagine what it meant to Mostert, who spent his first two NFL seasons on the run, in a state of perpetual transience. Look at the Transactions section on Mostert’s Pro-Football-Register.com page. For most players, this is a brief listing - the day he was drafted, maybe one trade or free-agent contract.

For Mostert, the Transactions section is a sacred text, a roadmap and a history of tribulation and rejection. It currently consists of 25 separate moves. There is no draft designation, because Mostert never received that honor; he joined the Eagles as an undrafted free agent on May 9, 2015. From there, his Transactions become a treadmill.

Mostert has been waived five times, by five different teams, and twice acquired off the waiver wire. He has been cut (a slightly different process) five times, by four different teams. He has been signed to the practice squad of the Eagles, Jets, Bears (twice) and 49ers. He was added to San Francisco’s injured reserve on ?Nov. 29, 2017, and again on Nov. 3, 2018.

“I actually still have the cut dates,” Mostert said at the podium Sunday night. “And I look at that before every game.”

He remembers being particularly discouraged at the beginning of the 2016 season. Mostert was with the Browns at the time. His wife is from Cleveland. They thought they might have found some stability. A minor injury kept the running back out of the final preseason game, but he made the initial 53-man roster. The celebration lasted 24 hours. The Browns cut him the next day.

“I really had a talk with my wife, saying, ‘What do you think should happen?’ after I got cut,” Mostert recalled. “She basically said, ‘Hey, if you love your job, if you love this sport, you’ll do anything for it.’ That was my philosophy from here on out.”

Mostert’s career turned a corner when the 49ers signed him to their practice squad on Nov. 28, 2016 (Transaction ?No. 21 on your scorecard), though it might not have seemed like it right away. They were his seventh team in a year and a half, an astounding rate of travel even by NFL standards.

With all those stops, I guessed that Mostert must know players and coaches on just about every team the 49ers face these days.

“I do,” he said as he began to search his mental Contacts list. “I know Z – (Packers edge rusher) Za’Darius Smith. I played with him in Baltimore. I was Juice’s (49ers fullback Kyle Juszczyk’s) teammate there, too. Who else? (Green Bay safety) Adrian Amos, I was with him with the Bears. (Safety) Will Redmond, I was here with him. So I know some guys. Yeah, coaches, too. Special teams coach for Green Bay (Shawn Mennenga), he was actually an assistant coach in Cleveland.”

It was Chip Kelly who first brought Mostert to Santa Clara. Kelly had coached him (and cut him) in Philadelphia. When Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch got here in 2017, Mostert finally found a staff willing to give him an honest shot.

“They talked to me,” he said, “and they basically said, ‘Hey, look, we believe in you. We’re gonna give you an opportunity. But it’s up to you how you’re gonna spend that opportunity.’ And I took that to heart.”

Still, there was little to presage the heroics to come. Mostert’s first season with the 49ers, 2017, was spent almost entirely on special teams. His blistering speed makes him really good at that, one of the best gunners - the guys who line up wide and speed downfield to tackle punt returners - in the NFL. Mostert acknowledges there were times, and not so long ago, when he thought special teams might be the extent of his career.

Last spring, Mostert was pretty much the 49ers’ fourth-string running back, behind Jerick McKinnon, Tevin Coleman and Matt Breida. It was hard to beef.Those are legitimate NFL running backs.

But McKinnon wound up missing his second consecutive season with a knee injury, and Breida has struggled with fumbles this year, so Mostert’s touches have increased after he ran the ball 34 times for 261 yards in 2018. Over the final five games of the 2019 regular season and the divisional-round win against Minnesota, he averaged 12.7 carries. Mostert had become the 49ers’ No. 1 option at running back, if not their starter. And he was still playing special teams.

“There’s been times when he got done running the ball, we had to punt, and he still goes out there (on punt coverage), and he’s efficient,” fellow 49ers special teamer Tarvarius Moore said. “I can remember one game he had only two gunner routes, but he had two tackles. That just shows his efficiency, and how dangerous he is out there, at running back or on special teams.”

When Coleman injured his shoulder with a little more than 9 minutes left in the second quarter Sunday, the implication was clear. The ball was in Mostert’s court. In his hands. He responded with one of the great performances in playoff history.

After the game, Mostert stood on the Levi’s Stadium field, holding the George Halas Trophy in one hand and his 6-month-old son in the other, basking in the sort of adulation a special-teamer might dream of. His son’s name is Gunner. Confetti rained around them. The crowd, still ample, stood and cheered as one.

“Earlier in the year, I didn’t have a clue who you were,” Terry Bradshaw yelled into a microphone at Mostert. “As a matter of fact, I got you wrong on my highlight package. I called you Mozart.”

Not a bad figure to be mistaken for, but not quite right for Mostert, who is less the conductor of the 49ers’ offense and more its beating bass drum at this point.

You can reach columnist Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. Follow him on Twitter: ?@Skinny_Post.