NFL: Adopted coach's jaw-dropping discovery

Kansas City Chiefs running backs coach Deland McCullough. Photo / Getty

From ESPN and the NFL comes the most shocking paternity revelation since Darth Vader uttered that famous line to Luke Skywalker.

You should find time to read the full feature superbly reported by radio host Sarah Spain, but in a snapshot this is the incredible story of Kansas City Chiefs running backs coach Deland McCullough.

McCullough, 45, is adopted. He is the offspring of Carol Briggs, who gave birth to him at age 16 after a fling with a young man who had already left her hometown in Youngstown, Ohio, when she discovered she was pregnant.

She opted not to tell the young man of his pending fatherhood and gave McCullough, who was originally named Jon Briggs, up for adoption.

Unaware of his origins, he became the son of a local radio host and his wife, but was fatherless again within two years when the marriage broke down.

Sherman Smith. Photo / Getty

Despite an unsettled upbringing he became a star high school football player and signed with Miami University after being recruited by the college's running backs coach Sherman Smith.

Smith, known as "The Tank" during his playing days with the Seattle Seahawks, was in the early days of a coaching career that would later see him help guide his former team to victory in Super Bowl XLVIII in 2014.

Through the remainder of McCullough's playing days and his own rise through the coaching ranks to the NFL, Smith remained his mentor. A confidante he could go to with any problem for advice.

But their conversations always kept to football.

McCullough didn't share his past — which began to dominate his thoughts in 2017 when he decided to search for his biological parents.

New laws in his home state allowed him to unseal his adoption records, and he contacted Carol Briggs on Facebook after seeing her name on his birth certificate.

Their reunion left one piece of the puzzle to fall in place: who was McCullough's father?

"Your father's name is Sherman Smith," Briggs told her son.

McCullough nearly passed out. A man he'd known for 28 years, who his teammates had joked looked a lot like him, who was his mentor … was his father.