Malik Cunningham steps in to bring game-changing energy to Louisville

Four seasons ago, Smitty Grider went home to Montgomery, Alabama, to coach the first varsity football team at Park Crossing High School. He had a lot of work to do. Park Crossing was the first new public high school football team in the county since 1968.

A 15-year-old boy had moved to the area before that season, and he told Grider he was a quarterback. OK, Grider recalled thinking. He had heard that before.

“You get transfers, all the time, that come in and say they play quarterback, and they don’t,” Grider said.

Grider took his team to practice. It took three passes for the boy to change the coach’s opinion.

“It was like, ‘This guy, he’s the guy,’” Grider said.

That is how Malik Cunningham became the first quarterback in the history of Park Crossing.

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Cunningham will make his first collegiate start for Louisville on Saturday at Virginia. Coaches have said he brings a spark to an offense that needs it. The Cardinals are 2-1 and searching for energy after a sluggish start to the season.

Their speedy redshirt freshman quarterback has brought that before.

A rising star

Cunningham lived for most of his childhood in the Birmingham, Alabama, area. Before his sophomore year of high school, his uncle passed away, so his mother, Stacy Skanes, moved to Montgomery to be closer to her sister and to bring Malik closer to his cousin.

Until that point, Cunningham said he was more of a basketball player. But he joined the new football team at Park Crossing, and he called that “a big step to get this thing going.” He started every game for three seasons, and his team went 28-7.

“You need a quarterback that’s that kind of guy, that kids will follow,” Grider said. “He just came across instantly as a leader.”

Park Crossing thrived largely because of an influx of talented transfers. P.J. Blue, now a redshirt sophomore linebacker at Louisville, came from nearby Jemison High School in 2015, Cunningham’s junior season. The team also brought in Jeawon Taylor (now a Florida safety) and Tank Jenkins (now a Texas A&M offensive lineman).

Cunningham was the one who led a team of kids, few of which had ever played a playoff game, into the state tournament as a junior. He hung around the 1,800-yard, 20-touchdown mark in each of his first two seasons.

He broke out as a senior with 2,913 passing yards, 1,015 rushing yards and 49 total touchdowns, earning Super 12 honors as one of the best dozen players in Alabama.

He had attracted colleges’ attention long before that. But he ran into the same obstacle as another former Louisville dual-threat quarterback, Lamar Jackson. Some SEC schools saw his athleticism and didn’t view him as a quarterback.

“There were definitely schools that saw him at other positions,” Grider said. “There were some schools that were very near geographically to us, that I felt he was a perfect fit for, that just didn’t do a good job of evaluating him.”

From Monday:Louisville makes quarterback change, will start Malik Cunningham

Georgia recruited Cunningham as a wide receiver, Alabama as a defensive back, Grider recalled. The coach assured recruiters, “He’s not an athlete playing quarterback. He’s a quarterback that’s an athlete.” yet many powerhouses didn’t see Cunningham running their system.

“But [Louisville] always, since day one, said, ‘You will be our quarterback if you came to Louisville,’” said Skanes, his mother. “And he believed it, and they’ve held true to it. So we’re excited about that.”

Cunningham wanted to play quarterback, and Petrino’s offense was a good fit.

Petrino tends to be selective with quarterbacks. He has not signed more than one in any of his four full recruiting cycles at Louisville.

Cunningham was a three-star prospect, not a blue-chipper. He stands 6-foot-1, not 6-foot-4. He does not have 4.3 or 4.4-second speed in the 40-yard dash, Grider said, but rather is in the 4.5 range.

He’s young. He will not solve all of Louisville’s problems Saturday. But the Cardinals are turning to him because they see the same thing Park Crossing did: undeniable potential.

‘A great athlete’

After practice Tuesday, quarterbacks coach Nick Petrino mentioned Lamar Jackson only once. It’s far too soon to compare Jackson and Cunningham.

But Louisville was recruiting Cunningham while Jackson was seizing control of the starting job. Cunningham visited for Louisville’s 2016 spring game, in which Jackson finished 24-for-29 passing for 519 yards and eight touchdowns. Jackson later hosted Cunningham on his official visit. Cunningham said he talked with Jackson over the phone this week.

The two are linked, for now.

“It’s just natural,” Cunningham said. “It’s just how I play. But I have gotten a lot from [Jackson]. Some things that he does, I try to do, but I can’t. I try to do my own thing.”

Cunningham is the Louisville quarterback who best resembles Jackson. The Cardinals’ opponent Saturday is preparing as such.

“When I think Louisville, I think Lamar Jackson,” Virginia coach Bronco Mendenhall said. “That is their brand. That is who they want at that position. It’s how they want to run their system. So they’ve just chosen, in my opinion, the player of the two that closest resembles what his skill set was, which is just the electric type of athlete that can take the ball the distance on any play.”

Cunningham has been a work in progress as a quarterback. He said Tuesday that when he arrived at Louisville he could not close his shoulder (finishing his throwing motion by completing the rotation of his shoulder). His focus over the summer was in the weight room, to improve his passing ability with physical strength.

There’s more work to do.

“For real, I don’t really know how to slide,” Cunningham said. “So in the game Saturday, it went through my head to slide. I was about to slide. I didn’t know how to do it, so I just fell. It’s something I got to learn how to do.”

Read more:Petrino previews Louisville football vs. Virginia, reviews WKU game

Desperate for a boost against Indiana State, Louisville inserted Cunningham and hoped for magic. Nick Petrino said the Cardinals ran plays they had not even practiced that week. They had not used them since Jackson’s days.

The players around Cunningham remembered them well enough. Cunningham’s athleticism took care of the rest.

“He couldn’t do that at all until he got here,” Bobby Petrino joked two days later. “It’s all coaching.”

Then he smiled and said, “He’s just a great athlete. A tremendous athlete.”

Jake Lourim: 502-582-4168; jlourim@courierjournal.com; Twitter: @jakelourim. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: www.courier-journal.com/jakel.