LAKEVILLE — Malcolm Mitchell was sitting pretty after Super Bowl LI on Feb. 5, 2017.
The wide receiver’s New England Patriots defeated the Atlanta Falcons 34-28 in one of the biggest comebacks in Super Bowl history.
Mitchell was a big part of that, catching five passes from quarterback Tom Brady in the fourth quarter and converting four of them into first downs.
But Mitchell was battling a bad knee. He did not play at all in 2018 and retired the following year.
Off the field, he was dealing with something even more personal: he could only read at about a fourth-grade level. How he confronted and overcame that obstacle became the focus of his remarks to students at Indian Mountain School in Lakeville on Friday, April 17.
He told the students that he grew up in a poor, single-parent household in Valdosta, Georgia. Valdosta High School was named as the community with the richest sports tradition by ESPN in 2008, and Mitchell played for the high school and for the University of Georgia.
But it was a difficult life. Hunger was a factor, he said. Mitchell credited his mother for setting a strong, positive example.
“But love can’t fix a runaway stomach,” Mitchell said.
The family relied on food stamps, and when the food started to run out toward the end of the month, Mitchell and a couple of friends worked out a scheme to steal chips, candy and sodas from a convenience store and make their escape along nearby railroad tracks.
He told the students that life presented him with choices, and he didn’t always make good ones.
Neither did his friends. One of the boys involved in the convenience store caper is dead, Mitchell said, and the other is in prison.
By age 17, Mitchell said he began drawing interest from top college football programs, but was academically ineligible.
His 11th grade social studies teacher worked with him after school to get his grades up.
“She forced me to understand the potential of my life,” Mitchell said.
At age 21, a star athlete at the University of Georgia, Mitchell was embarrassed by his lack of reading ability.
He went to a bookstore and bought a pile of children’s books.
“Dr. Seuss, Shel Silverstein, I read them all,” he remembered.
He described a methodical process, reading the picture books to develop his vocabulary and learn sentence structure.
Then he moved on to graphic novels and eventually books written for adults.
Now, at age 32, he reads widely and constantly.
Mitchell published his first children’s book, “The Magician’s Hat,” in 2016.
He travels the country, speaking to schools about reading and about life. He told the students that their job is “to wake up every day and be the absolute best you can be.”
After his remarks, Mitchell fielded questions from a group of student journalists.
One question was how he converted a weakness – reading comprehension – into a strength.
“It’s the life I live now,” he replied.
He said he had college and pro teammates with the same problem who were encouraged by his forthrightness. “In confirming my weakness, I liberated others.”
“The first step to growing is admitting where you currently are,” he said.
Mitchell threw in a little NFL tidbit at the end of the discussion.
He said he was staying late at practice, in part to try and get to know Brady – a notoriously hard worker –better.
He noticed that Brady rubbed something on his skin after his shower.
Afterwards, he peeked into Brady’s locker and saw it was coconut oil.
The next day, he confessed to Brady that he’d looked in the locker and asked why he used coconut oil.
“He was married at the time to one of the most beautiful women on the planet,” said Mitchell, referring to model Giselle Bundchen, who was married to Brady from 2009 to 2022.
“He said she rubbed coconut oil on herself every day.” Mitchell paused and then grinned. “So now I wear coconut oil every day.”
