49ers RB Raheem Mostert won’t forget being cut by the Bears — or 5 other teams

MIAMI — Raheem Mostert hasn’t committed the dates to memory. The 49ers running back prefers it that way. When he opens up the Notes app on his cell phone, he wants to be stung by reading the dates on which he was cut by six NFL teams — the same way he was hurt the moment they happened.

So, no, he doesn’t remember Nov. 24, 2016 — the day the Bears cut him.

But he doesn’t want to forget it, either.

“I’ve been an underdog all my life,” he said Wednesday. “For me, anything at that point that I felt like was negative, I turned it positive and used it as fuel.”

Each of the six teams that cut him from September 2015 to November 2016 — the Eagles, who signed the Purdue alum as an undrafted free agent, followed by the Dolphins, Ravens, Browns, Jets and Bears — imparted different lessons.

The Bears, though, didn’t leave him bitter. He appeared in two games in a 2½-month span that included two practice-squad stints.

“I view all of them the same but in different areas of my life,” said Mostert, who turns 28 in April. “Some areas were really touching for me, and some areas were, ‘Aw, I went to this city. I got to go on Michigan Avenue and eat deep-dish pizza,’ and stuff like that.”

The 49ers signed Mostert to their practice squad four days after the Bears waived him.

“It turned out to be pretty good,” he said.

He has never left, working his way up to a special-teamer and a part-time running back, then this year to part of a three-headed backfield monster that helped propel the 49ers to the Super Bowl against the Chiefs on Sunday.

No one, though, saw his NFC Championship Game performance coming. On Jan. 19, he put together one of the greatest playoff showings in the sport’s history.

Mostert ran 29 times for 220 yards against the Packers, falling only 29 yards short of Eric Dickerson’s all-time playoff-game rushing record. He became the only player to run for at least 200 yards and four touchdowns in a playoff game and the only one to run for at least 150 yards and three touchdowns in one half.

“That’s the thing I respect about Raheem the most: He kept grinding, he kept going,” said running back Tevin Coleman, the Oak Forest High School grad who forms the 49ers’ troika with Matt Breida and Mostert. “He didn’t let that change who he was. I’m real proud of him. He’s doing an amazing job.”

The three are so close that Breida said cheering Mostert’s star turn is what it must feel like to watch a son thrive.

“He’s been in the NFL longer than I have,” Breida said. “He’s been fighting and trying to prove people wrong on every team he’s been on. I feel like he’s finally done that now. He’s finally shown people what he can do. He’s not just a special-teams player. He’s a running back, too.”

And a surfer — though the three-year, $8.7 million contract he signed before the season has made him hit pause on his pastime.

Mostert grew up four hours up the Florida coast from here, in New Smyrna Beach, “The Shark Attack Capital of the World.”

He told a story about sitting on his board years ago while his friends begged him to be still until a shark passed underneath.

“You have to keep calm,” he said, “because at any moment a shark will think you’re food.”

Tacklers, by comparison, aren’t so intimidating.

Surfing helped a young Mostert develop balance and core strength, too.

“When you’re catching a wave, you really have to bend your knees and use your toes to grip the board and use all the wax and stuff like that,” he said.

The past, though, is what fuels him.

“I feel like he just wants it to be known that those teams didn’t get it right,” Breida said.