It’s hard to find Kalel Mullings without a smile on his face.
Lately, the graduate running back has plenty of reasons to smile. He’s in the midst of a breakout season for the Michigan football team and is coming off of the best game of his career. After four years of flipping between linebacker and running back, waiting his turn, Mullings is taking full advantage of his opportunity.
Mullings’ smile isn’t merely circumstantial, though.
“The best thing about Kalel is, I love the dude, he just lights up the room,” Mike Mason, Mullings’ defensive coordinator at Milton Academy and current Mustangs head coach, told The Michigan Daily. “He’s always smiling. There’s never a bad day in his world. It can be, I’m sure he has many, but you never see it. He’s always got a smile on.”
Off the field, that’s Mullings’ default — he’s seemingly always in a good mood. Whether he’s gearing up for a big game, showing someone around campus or performing in Milton’s all-male a cappella group, the Miltones, he does it with a smile.
On the field, though, Mullings approaches things a little differently. He still never strays too far from his off-field default, but his default isn’t entirely as joyful as it is when he’s going about his day-to-day life. Mullings has seen plenty of ups and downs throughout his career with the Wolverines, and not all of them make him smile.
But whether he’s going through his lowest moments or reaching his highest peaks, Mullings always stays level.
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Back in 2019, during his senior season in high school, Mullings had a bad day — or at least a bad first half. The Mustangs were losing 21-6 heading into halftime, and their opponents delivered a hit on one of Mullings’ teammates right before the break, which Milton collectively deemed a cheap shot.
According to Mason, Mullings was fuming. But he didn’t let that stop him from taking charge and creating a change.
“In the locker room, (the coaches) didn’t even go in,” Mason said. “Kalel and another senior took over, they spoke to the team. We came out of halftime, we scored 28 straight and won the game.”
Mullings single-handedly led the charge, scoring four touchdowns during the game. No matter how poorly the first half went, no matter how angry he was about the cheap shot, he kept his cool and moved forward.
That second half much more closely resembled the rest of Mullings’ 2019 season. Playing at running back, linebacker, wide receiver and on special teams — wherever the Mustangs needed him to — Mullings excelled in his final year in high school. To cap it off, he was named the 2019 Gatorade Player of the Year in Massachusetts.
But even as things went his way, Mullings stayed level.
“Any game we played, he always stayed the same,” Mason said. “He could score five touchdowns, and you’d think he had a bad game. He could have a bad game, and you’d think he’d scored five touchdowns. He was level all the time.”
At Milton, Mullings found ways to stay steady through highs and lows, setting himself up for the level of public scrutiny that some of his moments have had at Michigan.
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Mullings played linebacker for most of the Wolverines’ 2022 season, same as he had during his first two years in Ann Arbor. But when then-junior running back Blake Corum got hurt in the penultimate game of the regular season, Michigan called on Mullings to revisit his old position ahead of a top-five clash with Ohio State.
And on a pivotal third-and-1 in Buckeyes territory, Mullings reintroduced himself to the world as a running back — or more accurately, a quarterback.
Mullings took the handoff and started running up the gut, before suddenly pulling up before the line of scrimmage. He leapt into the air and tossed the ball 15 yards downfield to tight end Luke Schoonmaker, who brought it in for a key first down. For as much as onlookers were in disbelief at a linebacker being called upon to throw the ball on a trick play, Mullings himself could barely believe it.
“(I) got it completed, even though I could have led him a little bit, but got it completed,” Mullings told The Daily. “We won the game, and that’s all that matters. Just surreal honestly, and just craziness going on in my head.”
Successfully executing a key trick play in his first game at running back in three years, and against Ohio State, to boot, was about as high as it could have gotten for Mullings. Barely more than a month later, however, Mullings experienced a similarly large low.
With the Wolverines trailing TCU 14-3 early in the Fiesta Bowl, Mullings came in on the 1-yard line to attempt to punch the ball into the end zone. But Mullings never got possession of quarterback J.J. McCarthy’s handoff, a Horned Frogs defender recovered his fumble and Michigan walked away empty-handed.
Once again, the spotlight was on Mullings — only this time, it was in a negative light. While Mullings’ confidence didn’t take a hit, he felt like he let his team down. Outsiders, meanwhile, weren’t as kind to Mullings, once again wondering why a linebacker was involved in a key play. They didn’t understand why he was getting the ball on the goal line.
Of course, Mullings had plenty of experience playing running back prior to Michigan. But that didn’t change the fact that he was a scapegoat.
And still, even with hate swirling around him, Mullings stayed level.
“Just overcoming that and working through that, and accepting that, but at the same time knowing that there’s room to grow, that was really just the biggest thing,” Mullings said. “It’s never being too down with the lows and never being too high with the highs. That’s how I live.”
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After a rollercoaster finish to Mullings’ 2022 season, his 2023 was comparatively mellow. Both Corum and then-junior Donovan Edwards came back for another season, leaving very few touches available for now-full-time running back Mullings. Mullings had fewer ups and downs throughout the season, but the lack of playing time was a low in and of itself.
Just like he always does, though, Mullings didn’t get too down.
“He’s not the type of kid that said that should be me,” former Milton coach Kevin MacDonald told The Daily. “He’s the type of kid that said, ‘when my time comes, you know, my time will come and I’ll be ready to go.’ ”
After three years away from running back, and three years building a linebacker’s frame, Mullings admits that he lost his knowledge of the position a little bit. When Mullings transitioned back and refound who he was as a running back, he was no longer the speed-focused back he had been for the Mustangs. But with Edwards and Corum ahead of him, his size provided more of a pathway to carve out a role for himself.
“Looking at Blake, looking at Dono, they’re great backs, but they don’t have my size,” Mulligans said. “If I’m gonna try to get on the field, I have to bring something that those two guys aren’t necessarily bringing. … That’s really when I tried to hone in on getting some power in my game, and bringing that kind of physicality”
Mullings still barely got on the field on offense during the 2023 season, totaling just 38 touches and 254 yards from scrimmage. But he got more experience under his belt as a running back at the college level, and got the chance to learn from Corum and Edwards.
While others might have gotten down about the lack of playing time, Mullings took a different perspective.
“I looked at it like, if I can take this break from running back, come back, and get any playing time with these two guys, I mean, I can’t be that bad right?” Mullings quipped. “I gotta be some type of good.”
With Corum now in the NFL, Mullings is finally getting to show how good he can be this season. He has the power that he developed while staying steady last season, and has shown it by bruising his way through would-be tacklers. After two years shaping his frame back to that of a running back, he’s finding his speed once again — even if Edwards and the rest of the running backs mess with him about being slow.
As the Wolverines’ offense has labored through growing pains, Mullings’ impact has only grown. No longer is anyone wondering why he’s touching the ball — they’re calling for him to touch it more. Against Arkansas State, Mullings showed just how far he’s come, totaling a career-high 153 yards and two touchdowns while breaking off three 30-plus yard runs.
And for as level as Mullings tries to stay while he’s on the field, when he saw nothing but green ahead of him to score his first touchdown in nearly a year, Mullings couldn’t hold himself back.
“One thing I always say is that one of the best feelings in sports, and really all of life, is getting out an open field knowing you’re about to score,” Mullings said. “… I couldn’t do anything but smile.”
Through highs and lows, through anger and jubilation, Mullings stays level. But with the way things are going for him this season, he just can’t help himself from breaking back into his smile.
Alum Grace Beal/Daily. Buy this photo.
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