Bob Lutz: Former NFL player Elbert Mack brings more than coaching skill to North football

If there’s a high school football program around here that can use some overachievers, it’s the North Redskins.

North has had a terrible time of it over the past two decades. There were nine consecutive losing seasons from 1994-2002, when North was 18-63.

And there have been 11 losing seasons in a row from 2004 through 2014, a span in which the Redskins are 14-89 counting their season-opening loss last week to South.

But in the middle of all that losing was a ball of fire, personified by a mighty mite of a football player who has taken overachieving to a level that, well, overachieves.

His name is Elbert Mack and he is still all of 5-foot-11 and 175 pounds. After experiencing three successive 1-8 seasons at North, Mack convinced his coach, Joe Belden, to move him to quarterback.

What did the Redskins have to lose?

And Mack delivered. He was too small and too fast to be tackled, and by the time somebody had managed to box him in, North had finished an 8-3 season that included a Class 6A playoff win.

Well, Mack is back.

After a seven-year NFL career that nobody could have predicted, Mack decided to retire, move back to Wichita and plant himself at North to see what he can do to help his alma mater figure out the football thing.

“The NFL was a short-term goal,” Mack said. “It’s time for long-term ventures now.”

He bought a barber shop and lounge, Midwest Blends, near Central and Edgemoor. He’s attending barber college so he can cut hair in his shop, which he hopes to be doing by the first of the year.

And he’s coaching at North under Belden, who is in his second stint with the Redskins.

“I want to be at North and I wouldn’t coach anywhere else in the City League,” Mack said. “I walked those halls and I feel like those kids at North deserve some success.”

Mack was undrafted after his senior season at Troy University in Alabama, where he had eight interceptions. He signed as a free agent with the Tampa Bay Bucaneers in 2008 and played in 15 games that season and 81 in his career.

He returned two of his six NFL interceptions for touchdowns and played four seasons with the Bucs, two with Houston and one with New Orleans in 2014.

Now it’s time to be home. And who has a better message for North’s players, who must feel like there’s little hope of football success, than Mack?

“I tell them to not let anybody tell them they can’t do it, man,” Mack said. “The other day, when we were getting ready to play South, I told these guys that I’ve been here before, part of a program that nobody believed in. And we got it turned around. Once that happens, you see the fans start coming back out and it gives you a sense of pride.”

Belden said Mack, who is working with North’s secondary, has had an impact.

“Our defensive backfield is our strong point right now,” Belden said. “And a lot of that is due to (Elbert).”

Belden said he’s remained in contact with Mack since he graduated from North.

“We probably never went more than six months without talking,” Belden said. “He always planned to come back to Wichita, coach at North and give back to the community. And that’s what he’s done.”

Belden’s previous secondary coach decided to resign and the next day, Mack called to ask if there was a spot on his staff.

“Fate,” Belden said. “He still brings the same level of intensity and enthusiasm he did as a player.”

Mack, 29, said football success at North won’t happen until more students go out for the team.

“I guess it’s not cool to play football at North,” he said. “Now I’m going to try and make it to where everybody wants to play and we have to turn kids down. Whether that means going door to door, hallway to hallway or passing period to passing period, it’s what we have to do. We’re looking for anything that resembles size, speed or skill.”

Mack won’t give up. He never has, not when he was a 100-pound freshman at North, not when only a smattering of colleges wanted him out of Butler Community College and not when he went undrafted after his senior year at Troy.

“I don’t think I considered the NFL was a reality for me until probably my senior year at Troy,” he said. “Until then, I was all about making sure I was ready to go on with my life once graduation came around. Then you have a couple of people coming around and telling you you might be good enough to play in the NFL.”

Mack bought in, lack of size be damned. If Mack played the odds, he never would have put on a pair of football pads.

“With his NFL experience and what he can provide for the team, I’d say he’s crucial to our defense in the secondary,” North senior Jared Faunce said. “He talks about what it takes to get there. You see a lot of guys in the NFL who are 6-2 or 6-4 and you see Mack and he’s not that far from us. And he made it. So with him being about the same size, it brings an extra motivation like maybe we can get there, too.”

Boiled down, that is Mack’s message.

“I learned at an early age that you’ve got to fight for whatever you get,” Mack said.

He’s brought spunk and hope to North’s football program. He went from 100 pounds to the NFL. What must those downtrodden North players believe is possible now?

This story was originally published September 11, 2015 at 3:41 PM with the headline "Bob Lutz: Former NFL player Elbert Mack brings more than coaching skill to North football."