Looking back, all the tinkering the Bears did with Shea McClellin has served him well with the Patriots.
Moved from defensive end to outside linebacker and finally to inside linebacker with the Bears, the fit was never quite right. Still the Bears discussed bringing back McClellin, their first-round draft pick in 2012, before they signed Jerrell Freeman last year.
The experience at multiple positions is part of what attracted the Patriots to McClellin, who received a three-year, $8.95 million contract. Now McClellin, 27, is quickly approaching Super Bowl LI and a date against the Falcons, who employ the man who picked him, former Bears general manager Phil Emery, as a national scout.
"I didn’t even know that to be honest," McClellin said. "I didn’t know where he was. That is awesome."
McClellin’s reputation was bound to be blown out of proportion one direction or the other by the fan base when he arrived in Chicago as an athletic kid from a school out west, not unlike Brian Urlacher 12 years earlier. The public had soured on former GM Jerry Angelo after a string of unproductive drafts and Emery had a background in college scouting. Emery’s first pick was going to be overhyped — good or bad. McClellin was going to be the next Urlacher or he was going to be a source of public frustration.
He became the latter, but expectations were far different when he arrived in New England, where he fits into an experienced defense that finds a variety of ways to plug and play different players. McClellin played on the end of the line for the first seven games when he totaled 10 tackles. Since the Oct. 31 trade of linebacker Jamie Collins to the Browns, he has been paired inside with Dont’a Hightower and has been more productive, posting 33 tackles in his last nine games, including the postseason.
His playing time is very game-plan dependent. He was on the field for 43 snaps in the AFC championship game win over the Steelers but only seven the week prior against the Texans after logging 29 in the regular-season win over the Dolphins when he set a Patriots record with a 69-yard fumble return to help seal a win and clinch the No. 1 seed in the AFC. He has been very active on special teams, more than he ever was for the Bears, and made one of the highlight plays of the season in Week 14 Milanobet when he hurdled the Ravens line to block a Justin Tucker field-goal attempt.
An under-the-radar signing in March, McClellin has been an important addition for the Patriots, who love players who can handle multiple tasks.
"That is what they are known for, getting versatile players that can rush the passer, drop in coverage, set the edge, whatever it may be," McClellin said. "My confidence I would say is at an all-time high. Glad that I got a new opportunity to refresh my mind and hit the reset button and not think about what happened in the past."
The Patriots system has a lot of verbiage, and that can be a stumbling block for newcomers. It’s why they’re very particular about football aptitude when vetting players.
"He’s very intelligent and he’s a great player and his biggest thing was correlating what he already knew to the terminology we use," defensive coordinator Matt Patricia said. "He’s really worked to find himself a good role in our defense. We’ve got a lot of pieces."
McClellin was nowhere to be seen when the Bears visited Foxborough, Mass., in August. He was stuck in the training room recovering from a shoulder injury and was disappointed he missed the chance to see old friends.
Back in Marsing, Idaho, the town of 1,031 nestled in the Snake River Valley about 45 minutes from Boise, Super Bowl LI is the buzz. It’s where McClellin was raised on Chicken Dinner Road. It’s where a huge banner of McClellin that formerly hung at Albertsons Stadium on the campus of Boise State now takes up the side of the Marsing Rural Fire District house.
From Logans Market, the grocery store in town, to the gas stations and coffee shop, McClellin is the talk of the town even though he hasn’t lived there since joining the NFL.
"Everybody that knows somebody that knows Shea is asking how he is feeling, what he is thinking about it," said Johnathon Cossel, who played with McClellin growing up and is a coach and physical education teacher at Marsing High School. "Every single person in Marsing will be watching the Super Bowl this Sunday."
The hallways at the school will be decked out in Patriots colors before the end of the week and the young athletes in town identify with McClellin, who fully financed a youth football program last spring.
"We had almost 100 kids, which for Marsing is huge," Cossel said. "Shea put all the money upfront so all the kids could come."
You can bet they’ll throw a heck of a parade in Marsing the day McClellin returns if the Patriots triumph on Sunday. He always has been a star there even if it has taken some moving around to find a comfort zone on a Super Bowl team.
bmbiggs@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @BradBiggs
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