Tonight Jalon Daniels won his first game as an NFL quarterback. He was on the Prime Video set afterward when he stopped talking and waved somebody over. "Ma, come here. Ma, come here." Her name is Star. Jalon Daniels' father made it clear he was not going to be part of their lives. Here is what his mother decided to do about that. "I wanted to make sure that he never felt that feeling of not having Dad there." So she worked full time for an insurance company and took a second seasonal job at Toys R Us. She drove him to Pop Warner practices. She would not let him sleep over at friends' houses until high school, though he could bring ten of them to hers anytime. And when he wanted to go to a party, there was a condition. She parked outside of it. "She let me know when it was time to leave," he says, laughing. "An hour and a half before the party ended, we were on our way home." Here is the other thing she told him, over and over. She wanted him to grow up to be the kind of man anybody's daughter could bring home to her mother. Now the football, which nobody handed him either. His sophomore year at Narbonne High School in Los Angeles, the coaches moved him back down to the freshman team. He transferred to Lawndale High School, won the job, and Lawndale went 14 and 2 and took the first state championship in school history. His first scholarship offer came from Tennessee-Martin. He committed to Middle Tennessee State. Then Kansas came to see him in December of his senior year, and he flipped. He gave the Kansas Jayhawks six seasons. In 2021 he beat Texas in Austin, where Kansas had not won a game since 1938. In 2022 he threw for 544 yards in the Liberty Bowl. Then a back injury took 2023 away, and most players leave at that point. He stayed. He graduated with a 3.58 GPA. He was voted team captain four times, which no Kansas player had ever done. And with the first real money he was ever allowed to earn, he started a foundation for single mothers raising athletic children. He named it after her. In April, all 32 teams passed on him for seven rounds. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers signed him as an undrafted free agent on May 8. Tonight was his second career start. He went 19 of 25 for 189 yards and threw a touchdown to Bucky Irving. The Buccaneers beat the Dallas Cowboys 24 to 16 for their first win of the season after losing their first four. One win does not make anybody an NFL quarterback, and he would tell you that himself. But when the cameras finally found him, the first thing he did was make sure they found her too. "No matter what, I was present, and he always knew I was present."

He was on his uncle's coaching staff the year his uncle beat his father in the Super Bowl. Then he spent the next nine seasons working for his father. Today he coaches against him for the first time in a regular season game. His name is Jay Harbaugh and he is the special teams coordinator of the Seattle Seahawks. Start three generations back. Jack Harbaugh played safety at Bowling Green and became a coach. In 2002 he won a national championship at Western Kentucky. From 2004 to 2006 he coached running backs for the San Diego Chargers. Remember that last part. Jack had two sons. John took over the Baltimore Ravens and ran them for 18 years. Jim played quarterback in the NFL for 14 seasons, then coached Stanford, then the San Francisco 49ers, then Michigan, where he won the national title in 2024. In February of 2013 the two brothers met in Super Bowl XLVII. John's Ravens beat Jim's 49ers. One brother held the trophy. The other one did not. Jim's son Jay was working in Baltimore that season, on his uncle's staff. He had started as an undergraduate assistant at Oregon State, where he got a sociology degree. Then a summer scouting internship with the 49ers, which is to say with his dad. Then four years with the Ravens, which is to say with his uncle. In 2015 he went to Michigan to work for his father, and he stayed nine years. Tight ends. Running backs. Safeties. Then special teams coordinator, and in 2021 he was named the best special teams coordinator in college football. Add it up. Every single job he had ever held was for his father or his uncle. Then on February 13, 2024, the Seattle Seahawks hired him. First job of his life outside the family. This afternoon the Los Angeles Chargers come to Seattle. Jim Harbaugh is their head coach. Jay Harbaugh is on the other sideline. They met once before, in a preseason game in 2014, when Baltimore beat San Francisco 23-3. This is the first one that counts. And the team his father coaches is the same franchise his grandfather coached running backs for 20 years ago. Here is Jay on his dad. "I think he's the best coach in the world, and I enjoy being able to, just like I used to, ask him for advice and learn from him." He also said the weekly phone calls have gotten a little different lately, because both of them are competitive. Seattle head coach Mike Macdonald put it simply. "How often does a father and son get to coach against each other in an NFL game?" Be realistic about the football. Jay runs special teams. That is maybe 15 snaps. Nobody is going to win or lose this game on a father son chess match, and anybody telling you otherwise is selling something. But three generations of one family have now coached in this league, and today two of them are standing 100 yards apart. One of them taught the other one everything.