Tevin McDonald grew up the son of a professional football player, so Sundays in the fall and winter always meant watching his father go to work, whether at the stadium or on TV.
He thought everyone’s dad played in the NFL. Turns out, not everyone’s dad uses his 6-foot-2, 220-pound frame to intercept passes and punish receivers for a living, but Tim McDonald made one fine career out of it.
His father was one of the NFL’s best safeties, but that wasn’t very obvious to Tevin McDonald until an evening back in their hometown of Fresno, when Tim McDonald’s No. 7 jersey was retired by Edison High School.
“For them to retire his number, that was alarming,” Tevin McDonald said. “He kept that away from us, what type of player he was ““ one of the greatest to play safety.”
McDonald was given the No. 12 jersey when he arrived at UCLA, which was irrelevant in a redshirt year.
Before he could take the field in a UCLA uniform, he saw the perfect opportunity to make a change.
Transfers left UCLA without a No. 7 on defense, and McDonald stepped right in.
It was the number of Tim McDonald as a quarterback and safety at Edison, a “sacred” number Tevin McDonald couldn’t wear while he played for his dad at Edison.
It’s the number of older brother Tim Jr. McDonald, who goes by T.J. and is USC’s starting free safety.
It’s now the number of Tevin McDonald, a redshirt freshman who rose from third-string backup to UCLA’s starting free safety in a month to open the season.
“When I saw the chance to get seven, I just had to get it,” McDonald said.
“It just made sense, and felt right. It was another step to working out how it is now, with me and T.J. and how we decided to do this.”
Saturday’s rivalry game will pit brother against brother for the first time ““ T.J. McDonald was injured for the finale last year, while Tevin McDonald was sitting the year out.
Tim McDonald and their mother, Alycia McDonald, will be there. As for what they’ll wear? After all, they do have both jerseys.
“One thing I know for sure is there’ll be a No. 7,” T.J. McDonald said.
House divided
T.J. McDonald had just gotten to his locker at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum after enduring a thrilling triple-overtime loss to Stanford, only to find his phone buzzing about his brother.
A short ways away, Tevin McDonald had picked off his first, second and third career passes, leading UCLA to a victory over California at the Rose Bowl.
In addition to daily calls and texts, they meet each other face-to-face every other week, and a devastating loss wasn’t going to stop T.J. McDonald that night.
He made his way over to Westwood and celebrated Tevin McDonald’s accomplishment.
“I wasn’t really thinking about the Stanford game,” said T.J. McDonald, 18 months Tevin McDonald’s senior.
“I was just trying to help him and celebrate with him. A three-interception game doesn’t come along very often. I just wanted to celebrate with him, so I didn’t really bring any negative energy.”
It’s indicative of their brotherly bond, which has always been competitive and cooperative. But cooperation oftentimes trumped competition.
“We always played on the same team,” a smiling Tevin McDonald says longingly.
“At home, anything you could compete in ““ ping pong, basketball, my friends versus his friends ““ we found ways to be competitive.”
The levels of competition reached a new height on the day T.J. McDonald was graduating from Edison.
He was following in the footsteps of his All-American dad and heading to his alma mater to play safety for the Trojans.
Tevin McDonald, who had gone through his junior season with little recruitment from USC, found himself on the campus of UCLA that day, receiving a scholarship offer from then-cornerbacks coach Carnell Lake and coach Rick Neuheisel.
He made the drive back to Fresno ““ up the state Route 99, three hours, 15 minutes at the quickest ““ in time for T.J. McDonald’s graduation, with the offer in hand.
“At first, I was just kind of like, “˜UCLA?’ You know?” said T.J. McDonald, now a junior at USC.
“Then I talked a lot about it and I was excited for him. … Watching the way that UCLA recruited him, they recruited him harder than any other school.”
Tevin McDonald had grown up a Trojan, but wasn’t willing to wait. He signed with UCLA four days later.
“I wanted to be at T.J.’s rival school,” McDonald said.
They now sit on opposite sides of the fence in L.A.’s rivalry, which hasn’t changed their relationship.
They’re each other’s biggest fan and spend plenty of time critiquing each other.
“He’s knocking everybody out. The league’s trying to slow him down a little bit,” McDonald says of his brother’s hitting ability, alluding to a half-game suspension T.J. McDonald earned earlier in the year.
“He’s fast, he’s quick,” T.J. McDonald says. “He could have went to college to play either offense or defense.”
What they now have in common, at least, is a number.
“See you at the top”
Tevin McDonald was going to get his time in the UCLA spotlight eventually. It came quicker than he could have imagined.
By the season’s fourth game, the Pac-12 season opener at Oregon State, McDonald found himself starting at free safety, a position that had belonged to injured senior Tony Dye and recently-turned-pro Rahim Moore before that.
“That first start (Tevin McDonald) was kind of wide-eyed and bushy-tailed, kind of like the fog of war was setting in,” junior cornerback Sheldon Price said. “Now he’s making all the calls, doing his thing.”
He hasn’t given up his starting spot since, not even after Dye made his return Saturday against Colorado.
McDonald is hesitant to stack himself up against his dad and his brother ““ it’s too early after just eight starts. But he’s made an impression on his coaching staff.
“He’s got instincts galore, and usually when you’ve got a guy with instincts galore you’ve got to coach instincts out of him,” Neuheisel said.
“He’s so used to making plays for others at the level from which he came that you have to make sure he’s there to make the plays that the defense needs him to make.”
Those instincts were picked up from watching Tim McDonald, who picked off 40 passes and was six times an all-Pro in the NFL, play the position Tevin McDonald now does, and heeding his advice.
“He always tells us, at this level talent is on the same level. Everywhere,” McDonald says.
“We’re all Division I, we all got scholarships, and once you get to the league that’s the best of the best. It’s really about how much you know, and how your mind can make you that step quicker.
“He was a ballhawk ““ always around the ball, had tons of interceptions. It was all because he knew where the offense wanted to get the ball, knew where the ball was going. He was a playmaker.”
That “playmaker” label was thrown around after McDonald’s three-interception game, one that seemingly revitalized a UCLA season that had been left for dead following a 48-12 loss to Arizona.
“He’s like a hybrid Tony Dye-Rahim Moore” redshirt junior defensive end Datone Jones said afterward. “He’s a ballhawk.”
His Twitter bio reads, “Enduring the transformation from boy to man. See you at the top.” While he’s been growing into his role as a defensive leader on the field, he’s grown off it, too.
Those frequent trips back to Fresno, a staple during a redshirt year when he didn’t travel with the team, are a thing of the past.
It’s the longest he’s spent away from home, and with good reason. A new apartment, a new starting job and a new set of responsibilities leaves little spare time. The results are showing.
“He’s more comfortable,” says T.J. McDonald, who has been keenly observing from afar. “He’s playing a lot faster than he was his first week. I think it’s going to keep going up from here.”
Along the way, Tevin McDonald will do it a little differently than his father and brother. He stands at 6-foot, 195-pounds ““ smaller than his dad during his playing days or his brother. He also complements his gold with blue, not cardinal like his kin.
That doesn’t get in the way of family affairs. His father and brother have laid down the blueprint to being a top safety, he’s just adding a few tweaks along the way.
“Both of them demonstrate the right ingredients for a great safety,” McDonald said.
“That’s the type of player any safety would like to be. It just so happens that’s my dad, and the other one’s my brother. That’s something that I want to model my game after.”