League of his own: Cowing becomes first MUSD product tapped in NFL Draft

“With the 135th pick in the 2024 NFL Draft, the San Francisco 49ers select…”

Mark Castanon, 49ers Bud Light NFL Super Fan, is wearing a giant Super Bowl XXIX ring on his head and a red plaid kilt, among other swashbuckling 49ers gear, benighted to the fact his words make history in a small desert town 2,000 miles away.

“… Jacob Cowing, wide receiver, Arizona. Yeah, baby! Bang bang Niner gang!”

Castanon’s elation is palpable, but for Maricopa Unified School District bus driver Rodney Lee, 66, who watches the cathartic moment through a television screen inside his Rancho El Dorado home, the reaction is nothing more than a softly uttered chuckle and a reverent shake of the head.

No surprises here, he thinks to himself.

“I spoke to Jacob right before the draft,” Lee would recall. “I said, ‘He’s not just gonna make the league. Mark my words, that boy gon’ be All Pro one day, too.’”

Thirteen years on, Cowing keeps regular contact with his sixth-grade bus driver. Even as he steels himself to take the sport’s paramount stage, he’s still a Maricopa boy at heart, interviews with family members, friends, coaches and role models back home all but confirm.

Cowing, a 2019 graduate of Maricopa High School, is the first MUSD student-athlete drafted into any major pro sports league since Maricopa was incorporated and just the second since the school district was established in 1912 — 83 days after Arizona became a state.

The Oakland Athletics tabbed outfielder Mathew Reese out of MHS in the 16th round of the 1993 MLB Draft. He was a Maricopa boy at heart, too, it seems. He retired last year as principal of Leading Edge Academy.

There’s something about Maricopa that keeps ‘em coming back.

“I said, ‘Jacob, I want you to do Mr. Lee a favor. When you make it, I want you to come back and talk to the kids for me,’” the school district’s third-longest serving employee remembered telling a grade-school Cowing. “He said, ‘I will do that for you.’”

Mr. Lee was right — Cowing made it.

That 5-foot-9, 170-pound, twitchy little route runner from Maricopa went from Ram to Miner to Wildcat to Niner.

Battering ram

Maricopa High School’s Nov. 2, 2018, playoff game was the final curtain of Cowing’s high school career.

The matchup was underwhelming at best, soul-crushing at worst, as Williams Field High School in Gilbert routed the Rams 42-7.

For Cowing’s coaches, however, it was the game they’d never forget.

“He just showed out that night,” said Stephan Nelson, then Cowing’s position coach. “That game showed his football speed, like he was able to go zero-to-60 against these guys who were great athletes and great ballplayers in their own right. That was the real D-I moment for us.”

Amid a total offensive shutdown for the players in red and white jerseys, Cowing reeled in a 38-yard pass that night, the longest reception of the game.

At MHS, Cowing was considered one of Arizona’s top prep receivers. He caught 89 passes for 2,065 yards and 21 touchdowns during his high school career.

“I remember that game at Williams Field,” said MHS Defensive Coordinator Bill Poyser, himself a collegiate wide receiver at Walsh University in Canton, Ohio. William Field’s free safety already had a handful of D-I offers at the time, while Cowing didn’t have any entering his crowning high school contest.

“He caught a screen, that kid squares him up and Cowing just blew by him like he wasn’t there,” Poyser recalled. “I remember thinking, ‘Oh, he’s fast fast.’”

Cowing is venerated as one of the fastest players to ever grace the Rams’ gridiron. A humble, highly coachable kid, a nuanced route runner who took the weight room seriously to spite his undersized frame.

“Yeah, he was a small guy. But he could move,” said Nelson, who coached Cowing from his earliest years in youth football.

Cowing, who complemented football with stints on the high school basketball, soccer and track teams, limbered up nearly every muscle in his bantam body.

Poyser said he had “that sponge mentality,” ingurgitating the playbook, spending lots of time working on the intricacies of how to stack a defensive back and create leverage. He had a “phenomenal football IQ,” Nelson added, and refined his route running, his bread and butter, at MHS, always with a good attitude and never positioning himself as knowing more than another player.

He wasn’t the vocal leader, yelling at the people on the field, but rather a methodical, underneath yards-after-the-catch earner, always finding the hole with peregrine speed.
“He’s grinding, and when he’s not grinding, he’s trying to figure out other ways to grind,” Nelson said. “That’s the way the kid is.”

No ‘Miner’ achievement

A 2-star, mid-major recruit, Cowing pulled up skates and joined the University of Texas at El Paso as a Miner in 2019. It was his only FBS scholarship offer coming out of MHS.

During three seasons at UTEP, Cowing was the Miners’ leading receiver back-to-back years. In 2021, he finished with 69 receptions for 1,354 yards and seven touchdowns. He claimed the No. 9 spot nationally in receiving yards.

UTEP Assistant Athletic Director Drew Bonney remembers the day he looked at Cowing and said to himself, “He’s gonna make it.”

It was a Sept. 10, 2021, inter-conference road faceoff at Boise State — one of the first games with fan attendance at Albertsons Stadium since the pandemic, and spectators thronged the “Smurf Turf” in record numbers.

“It was very loud,” Bonney recalled. “I could barely hear myself think.”

The Miners got smothered, 54-13. But Cowing was a pearl in the mud with more than 100 yards receiving and a connection in the endzone.

El Paso Times beat writer Bret Bloomquist requested Cowing for the postgame interview. Bonney was uneasy — generally, after a loss like that, people don’t want to talk. But Cowing walked out, chin up, chest out and answered all the questions.

“He was so professional,” Bonney said. “That’s the night I was like, ‘This kid’s gonna do it. He’s gonna go pro.’”

When Cowing arrived at UTEP in 2019, the Miners were 1-11. In his final season in El Paso, the squad put together a 7-6 record, its first winning campaign since 2014.

“He was one of my favorite athletes to work with, and we’ve had a lot of great ones come through here,” Bonney said.

Think Green Bay Packers Pro Bowler Aaron Jones, 2018 34th overall Arizona Cardinals pick Will Hernandez and Jordan Palmer, who tutored Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen and Joe Burrow.

After his third season at UTEP, Cowing accomplished many goals in the sport. But since becoming a father his freshman year, he had a yearning to be closer to home. The separation from his son, Chase, ate at Cowing as the miles between Maricopa and El Paso seemed to widen.

“I wanted him to not have to travel six hours to come and watch my games,” Cowing said. “I wanted him to be part of my last two years of college.”

During the pandemic, the NCAA offered athletes an extra year of eligibility. Even though Cowing played three seasons at UTEP, a Conference USA member, he had two more seasons to play — ideally, somewhere closer to home. When he entered the NCAA transfer portal in 2022, Power Five programs like ASU, Mississippi State, LSU and the UofA, among many others, bird-dogged him with scholarship offers.

He would play his final two seasons as a Wildcat. But not without giving a nod to the Miners, where No. 2 belonged to tight end Luke Laufenberg, the son of former NFL quarterback Babe Laufenberg, who transferred to UTEP from Mesa Community College.

The same month Cowing joined the Miners, Laufenberg died at age 21 after a years-long battle with cancer. Cowing “talked to me and asked if he could wear No. 2 at Arizona,” Babe Laufenberg shared on X, then Twitter. “Of course, I said yes, that Luke would be honored.”

Baby mama drama

It was at UTEP when Cowing would execute one of the most climacteric decisions of his young life — disowning his father, Monte Cowing, who threw the first football to Jacob when he was just 4 years old.

Monte, the city of Maricopa’s longtime parks and recreation manager and a one-time fullback standout at Long Beach Poly High School in California, is credited with convincing his son not to stray from MUSD in high school and laying the groundwork that would ripen into league-tier talent.

But today, he hasn’t spoken to his son in years since they had a “falling out” when Jacob got his Maricopa High School sweetheart, Taylor Barchus, pregnant at age 18. Barchus watched the UTEP freshman Cowing put up 85 receiving yards against UAB with Cowing’s mother, Nycole Parker, when her water broke.

Chase Henry Cowing was born Nov. 16, 2019.

Jacob missed his son’s first word; Monte missed everything that came after, The Athletic, the sports department of The New York Times, reported.

“It’s mixed emotions because I wish things between him and I were better,” Monte told InMaricopa just after the draft. “I wish we were together on his journey.”

Monte diaries the paternal discord in his March 2024 graphic novella My Boy from Mars, the titular pet name he and Parker called Jacob to describe how he looked at birth, like a Martian.

But there’s more to the story, Monte would tell InMaricopa. Friction crescendoed when then-UTEP Head Coach Dana Dimel in 2021 remarked “how skinny” Jacob was during a press conference. A livid, perhaps mollycoddling Monte called Bonney in protest.

“Jacob’s dad really didn’t appreciate that comment,” Bonney said. “I said, ‘I don’t think it had anything to do with him not being tough.’”

That phone call was the tipping point for Jacob, who promptly disowned his father. In an April 27 conversation with reporters, he spoke from a Chandler home, surrounded by his friends, son, mother and sister, Senaya, also a former MHS standout on the varsity girls’ soccer team.

Monte, still determined to rekindle the relationship, watched the NFL Draft with as much ardor as anyone else.

“I couldn’t be happier,” he said. “The word ‘proud’ is inadequate. He’s a brilliant athlete, a genius athlete. I’ve always thought he had a gift, and I knew he’d make it.

“Maricopa has such great talent, and they always leave. My boy understood he could be a big fish in a little pond here in Maricopa. We were so involved in the city, we knew everybody. It was almost like a little Mayberry type of feeling. Maricopa has got this feather in their cap now.”

Home Alone

Monte’s right — it’s not that Maricopa has never birthed NFL-caliber talent.

They just didn’t stay.

“For some reason, the parents in Maricopa, because we don’t have the banners, don’t believe that it’s possible,” said Nelson, Cowing’s former coach, of MUSD student-athletes getting called to the league. “A lot of them don’t understand that part of the reason we don’t have the banners is because they are taking our weapons that we could be using here into the Valley.”

Why choose MHS over Chandler High School? The Chicago Bears’ N’Keal Harry, New Orleans Saints’ Cameron Jordan, Detroit Lions’ Chase Lucas and Los Angeles Rams’ Bryce Perkins all went there. The Las Vegas Raiders’ Isaiah Pola-Mao went to Mountain Pointe and 2024 NFC Champion Brock Purdy, now Cowing’s quarterback in San Francisco, went to Perry in Gilbert.

Brand recognition only goes so far, said MHS Head Coach Tevin Rutherford. Big-time FBS recruiters “make tons of money and their only job is to find you. It doesn’t matter if you’re playing for Basha, Snowflake or Yuma High School, they will find you if you have the drive and the desire that Jacob had.”

After more than a century spent scraping by, prioritizing keeping athletics afloat and laboring to match the city’s unprecedented growth, at long last, MUSD now turns its attention toward nurturing its next Jacob Cowing.

“Maricopa has grown so fast, it has been almost impossible for the high school to keep up with that growth,” Rutherford said. “Now, obviously, we want to improve our facilities to compete with other high schools around the state, trying to find ways to get us the stuff that those bigger schools have.”

Only 7% of high school football players go on to play college ball. Less than one-fourth of 1% make the NFL, whether drafted, signed in undrafted free agency or walking on.

Being plucked in this year’s NFL Draft is “an incredibly positive achievement,” MUSD Athletic Director Craig Moody said, for Cowing individually, the strength and quality of the MHS coaching staff, training facilities and overall athletic program.

“This achievement serves as inspiration for current and future athletes, demonstrating that with hard work, determination and the right support system, anything is possible,” Moody said. “We are immensely proud of Jacob and excited to see the impact they will continue to make both on and off the field.”

Said Poyser of his protégés in Ram red: “They don’t think it’s intangible anymore. Now, they know it’s tangible because Jacob Cowing got drafted.”

And for Nelson, there’s a little extra magic.

“I’m a 49er fan, diehard, born and raised,” he said. “I’ve been speaking this into existence as long as I could.”

Faithful to The Bay

In 2021, the UofA finished with a dismal 1-11 record, its worst ever. The following season, with the help of Cowing, the Wildcats improved fivefold to 5-7.

In Cowing’s final collegiate season, last year, Arizona finished No. 11 in the AP Top 25 poll, capping a 10-3 regular season with a seven-game win streak and dancing past Oklahoma 38-24 in the Valero Alamo Bowl Dec. 28.

Cowing peaked at the projected 21st overall pick that month but fumbled the chance to bolster his stock when an injury snuffed his Senior Bowl ambitions. Still, he led the entire FBS in unique routes run last year, and the 23-year-old offset his struggles with separation and the 50-50 ball with his agility and elite route-running.

Projected by oddsmakers between Rounds 3 and 5 on the eve of the draft in Detroit, Cowing settled nicely into Round 4 when San Francisco made the call.

Cowing grew up a Jerry Rice fan.

“Everything went how I wanted it to go,” Cowing told reporters in Chandler April 27. “My first impression, looking at the organization, they just went to the Super Bowl, so looking at their kind of offensive style too, I thought I was just a great fit.”

Cowing said his keys to success were keeping his body healthy and working hard.

While having a child as a teenager, out of wedlock, is an insurmountable roadblock for many, “It only drove him to work harder,” Nelson said.

The 49ers organization is certainly satisfied with its sixth choice in the 2024 NFL Draft.

“He’s got the quickness,” 49ers Head Coach Kyle Shanahan told reporters during a recent press conference. “For his lack of size, he makes up with mentality. Anything that you want to knock on a smaller guy, he makes up for in his mindset.”

Cowing’s NFL Combine drills yielded 30-some-odd percentiles in the broad jump, three-cone drill and 20-yard shuttle, but his sub-4.40 40-yard dash stole the show, an upside for a player his size — shorter than Taylor Swift.

He was the shortest and the lightest receiver taken in the 2024 NFL Draft.

Niners General Manager John Lynch told reporters in a press conference Cowing had the toughness to overcome his small stature. He didn’t name the player but said a trusted cornerback who opposed Cowing on the line of scrimmage said he was the toughest guy he matched up against last year.

“It’s a corner we respected his word [sic.] and that kind of just came up in a conversation as the coaches were going through it,” Lynch said. “Jacob, he’s a fun dude to watch play football. And you know, I think can help us in a variety of ways.”

Primetime

Should he make the 53-man roster, a likely scenario, Cowing would make his NFL debut in San Francisco’s home opener against the New York Jets on Monday Night Football, Sept. 9 at 5:20 p.m.

Primetime, baby.

Lee, who shuttled Cowing to his first grade-school football game, will be watching.

“I always told him Jesus had a blessing with his name on it,” Lee said. “He was one of them young men where you can look at him at a young age and see that he’s destined for greatness. I can tell the 49ers that they definitely got a sleeper.”

Justin Griffin contributed to this report.