Playing professional football was anything but a given for Malik Mustapha.
As a freshman at Weddington High School in Matthews, N.C., Mustapha, at 5-foot-2 and weighing only 115 pounds, might have been the least likely to have an NFL future, but the future 49ers starting safety always played bigger than his size.
“My first football memory, they put me on the O-line at first in my Pop Warner days and I tackled somebody instead of blocking them,” Mustapha told NBC Sports Bay Area. “I guess that was the first football moment that I had.
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“Then next moment was finally getting the ball for the first time and scoring a long touchdown in my first game. That will always be a special moment in my football journey.”
Between high school and college recruitment, Mustapha added 70 pounds and eight inches of height to his frame during a growth spurt, but that still wasn’t enough for most FBS football teams to offer a scholarship.
Dreams of playing at nearby Wake Forest University seemed like an impossibility, which made Mustapha adjust his path with an assist from his mother, Dee Myles.
This wouldn’t be the last time Mustapha’s mother influenced his path to the NFL. The former Dallas Cowboys fan knew that for her son to make it in football, his odds would increase if he focused on playing defense.
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With many of his teammates wanting to have the ball in their hands as wide receivers and running backs, Mustapha honed his skills as a defensive back, as his mother suggested.
“He got into the end zone so easily as a running back,” Myles said with a smile. “I thought it would be more challenging for him and I thought he would have more fun hitting people.”
Hitting opponents already is what Mustapha is known for at 49ers headquarters in Santa Clara. Fred Warner has taken notice, and the All-Pro linebacker is pleased to have another “enforcer” on the defense.
“Oh yeah, he’s laying the boom-stick out there,” Warner told NBC Sports Bay Area. “Most definitely. He’s out there laying the wood. We need it. We need tone-setters out there, and he’s brought that.”
Malik Mustapha snags his first NFL career INT 🙌 pic.twitter.com/ZVUcwqRIeF
— 49ers on NBCS (@NBCS49ers) October 11, 2024
To help her son earn a football scholarship, Myles would take Mustapha to every youth football camp within a four-hour drive from their Charlotte home, including a “mega-camp” at the nearby University of North Carolina in their hometown. Several schools were in attendance, including Wake Forest, who showed interest in Mustapha.
“They invited him to campus for a workout,” Myles said. “He did really well, but they offered a scholarship to a kid from Georgia instead. They actually drove to his high school during testing to tell him, and his heart was broken. He really wanted to go there.”
Mustapha was not deterred and chose to attend the University of Richmond under head coach Russ Huesman, even though it was an FCS program. But then the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic hit and football was canceled until the spring when the Spiders played a four-game season.
Myles saw that her son wasn’t happy and proposed an idea: Enter the transfer portal and see what happens. Unbeknownst to Myles or her son, Huesman is a close friend of Wake Forest head coach Dave Clawson.
“I kind of didn’t think anything of it because it was early, I hadn’t really done that much,” Mustapha said. “Once I hit the portal, Wake Forest called me a few hours after I submitted everything. All credit to my coach who talked to Dave Clawson. He vouched for me.”
In his first year at Wake Forest, Mustapha played in 13 games in 2021, registering 37 tackles — 28 solo, two for a loss and two interceptions before tearing his ACL in the Gator Bowl. According to his mother, the injury was not nearly as devastating as not being offered a scholarship by the school in the first place.
“He embraced the ACL issue,” Myles said. “I mean of course he was heartbroken, but he literally embraced it. Of course he cried when it happened but he said either it tears me down or I can use it, fight, and come back better. The day after surgery he was trying to do exercises.”
Mustapha battled back through his recovery in time to play the entire 2022 season and led the Demon Deacons with 58 total tackles. He was even better in his senior season, registering 80 total tackles —45 solo, five for a loss, one interception and a forced fumble.
Once with the 49ers, Mustapha’s ACL recovery would bond him with Talanoa Hufanga, who was recovering from his own ACL injury sustained during the 2023 NFL season.
Hufanga was one of the first to reach out to Mustapha as soon as he was drafted by the 49ers. Hufanga even invited him to his daughter's first birthday party, to help his new teammate acclimate to being in California for the first time.
“I just wanted to make sure he felt welcome,” Hufanga told NBC Sports Bay Area. “I’ve always been on the West Coast so I understand how it could be for him. I always make it a point to reach out and it’s been great getting to know him and he’s been great on the field too.”
It has been a long journey for Mustapha to get drafted by the 49ers, who happened to be his favorite childhood team, yet it’s only the beginning. When he was still playing running back, Mustapha grew to be a huge fan of Frank Gore after watching him on television and playing the Madden video game.
Imagine Mustapha's surprise when he walked into his draft meeting with the 49ers at the NFL Scouting Combine to see Gore on the other side of the table. Yet after that meeting, Mustapha did not hear from anyone associated with the 49ers organization until he received a call on the third day of the draft when San Francisco selected him in the fourth round (No. 124 overall).
The 49ers acquired that fourth-round selection from ... the Cowboys in exchange for former No. 3 overall pick Trey Lance.
Right after the call from general manager John Lynch and coach Kyle Shanahan, Mustapha happily brushed all of the remaining team caps onto the floor. The Dallas Cowboys hat, his mother’s favorite team, received special treatment: Mustapha promptly threw it out the door.
Myles happily converted her fandom.
“I remember crying when San Francisco beat Dallas to play in the Super Bowl [in the 1981 NFC Championshiop Game],” Myles recalled. “Dwight Clark, who happens to be from Charlotte, caught “The Catch” and I just cried, It broke my heart so bad. Wow, the team that made me cry is now the team that is making me happy.”
Mustapha quickly was tapped as a 49ers starter in Week 4 and three weeks later, he experienced his "Welcome the NFL" moment. Off-balance and one-on-one with Patrick Mahomes at the goal line, the Kansas City quarterback pancaked the rookie defender on his way to scoring a touchdown.
Instead of hiding from the attention, Mustapha got in front of the story with his strong sense of humor.
"I'm a goofy person," Mustapha said. "When that happened, I'm like, 'This is going to be an uproar. Might as well make fun of myself in the process.' As soon as I hit the ground I thought, 'This is really about to go viral. Glad I got that out of the way but that's never going to happen again.' "
Mustapha and 49ers Faithful alike hope that nothing like that ever happens again. But the fanbase does hope to see the humor and the rookie's hard-hitting style, flying like a missile toward any opponent.