Two Sprayberry grads among eight Georgia players in Super Bowl

Eight former Georgia high school players, including two from Sprayberry High, are on rosters for Sunday’s Super Bowl between the Chiefs and Eagles in Glendale, Arizona.

The Sprayberry pair – Jerick McKinnon of the Chiefs and Trey Sermon of the Eagles – are running backs.

“How cool is that, man?” said Billy Shackelford, the high school coach of both. “I’m like a proud papa. To see them make it to the pinnacle game is something. It doesn’t get any bigger than the Super Bowl.”

This will be first time that either has been on an active Super Bowl roster. McKinnon was a member of the 49ers’ team that lost to the Chiefs three years ago but was on injured reserve.

Other players from Georgia high schools in this game will be place-kicker Harrison Butker of Westminster, wide receiver Mecole Hardman of Elbert County, left tackle Orlando Brown of Peachtree Ridge, cornerback Jaylen Watson of Laney, defensive end Malik Herring of Mary Persons and cornerback Darius Slay of Brunswick.

Slay and Sermon play for the Eagles, the rest for the Chiefs.

Only Butker and Hardman have played on previous Super Bowl teams. This is the third for each, although Hardman is on injured reserve and won’t play.

The most eminent Georgia players figure to be Slay and Brown, who have made multiple Pro Bowl appearances, and Butker, who kicked the game-winning field goal to beat the Bengals in the AFC Championship game.

The Georgia eight will be among only about 180 Georgia players who have been part of any Super Bowl, according to Georgia High School Football Historians Association research, although several of those appeared in multiple Super Bowls.

The average number of Georgia players over the first 10 Super Bowls was 3.4. Over the past 10, it’s been 6.9, a measure of Georgia’s growing prominence in the NFL.

There has been at least one Georgia player in each game since Super Bowl III, when one of the principal players was New York Jets running back Emerson Boozer. The Chiefs’ Watson will be the first Super Bowl player from Augusta’s Laney High since Boozer.

McKinnon and Sermon are the first players from the same Georgia high school to play in the same Super Bowl since 2017, when Carrollton’s Josh Harris of the Falcons and Jonathan Jones of the Patriots were on opposite sidelines. Before that, it happened most recently during Super Bowl XXXIII in 1999. In that game, there were three pairs – Chuck Smith and Willie Green of Clarke Central, Jessie Tuggle and Ben Talley of Griffin and Gary Downs and Randy Fuller of Spencer. All but Green played for the Falcons.

McKinnon and Sermon were not high school teammates, as McKinnon graduated in 2010 while Sermon finished in 2017. Their paths to the NFL and the Super Bowl were dissimilar, too.

McKinnon was an undersized quarterback who didn’t get major Division I offers. Shackelford, now athletic director at Gordon Central in northwest Georgia, said one Power Five-conference coach visited McKinnon at Sprayberry, measured his arm length from arm pit to fingertip and left, spending no more than 30 seconds with the player. He didn’t consider McKinnon, who is 5 feet, 9 inches, to be a viable running back or to possess the length to play defense.

Sermon, on the other hand, was a blue-chip prospect from the start who ended up playing at Oklahoma and then Ohio State.

“Trey was a specimen physically,” Shackelford said. “Jerick had all those intangibles, and he played with a chip on his shoulder. He always wanted to prove he was good enough to play with the big dogs.”

McKinnon was a two-time 1,000-yard rusher at Georgia Southern. Both Sprayberry graduates became third-round NFL draft picks.

Shackelford said he and Sermon have exchanged text messages this week and that he spoke with McKinnon by phone a couple of days ago.

“Somebody asked me who I’d be pulling for,” Shackelford said. “That’s tough. A perfect ending would be a tie and both would be co-players of the game, but just the fact that they’re in the Super Bowl, I’m absolutely proud of both of them.”

Georgia players in Super Bowl LVII:

Philadelphia Eagles

Darius Slay, Brunswick (Mississippi State)

Trey Sermon, Sprayberry (Ohio State)

Kansas City Chiefs

*Mecole Hardman, Elbert County (Georgia)

Jaylen Watson, Laney (Washington State)

Malik Herring, Mary Persons (Georgia)

Orlando Brown, Peachtree Ridge (Oklahoma)

Jerick McKinnon, Sprayberry (Georgia Southern)

Harrison Butker, Westminster (Georgia Tech)

*Injured reserve