49ers’ Arik Armstead does some of his best work in Elk Grove, where he’s still loved
He’s the same guy.
49ers fame and fortune hasn’t changed who and what Arik Armstead is.
He’s still the tallest guy in most every setting at 6-foot-7, and he casts quite an imposing presence rushing in to ransack an NFL backfield from his defensive lineman spot.
But it’s still Arik with a lot of boy left in him. Polite, engaging, a giver. A smile creasing his youthful expressions.
This is how Armstead was as a national recruit in football and basketball while attending Pleasant Grove High School in Elk Grove in 2010-2012, when teenage celebrity led him once to say, “I’m no different than my classmates. I’m just a kid. A big kid, but a kid.”
He’s a man now, still playing a kid’s game, only now with a bigger following and much greater stakes. Armstead has had a Pro Bowl season despite not making the Pro Bowl, which irks and drives him. Even the most humble guys have ego.
Armstead’s fellow San Francisco 49ers say he is a great teammate, which is about the best compliment one can get.
Those who know Armstead best never expected anything less. It makes him easy to root for. He was raised by caring parents in Guss and Christa Armstead, who didn’t have to remind him to do his homework. They didn’t have to drag him to church. He held doors open for people on Sundays.
Armstead aspired to be as good of an athlete as his older brothers, and he’d pout if his father didn’t take him to workouts as a 5-year old. Guss is a one-time Sacramento State basketball banger and has been a longtime area strength and conditioning coach. He afforded young Arik an accelerated learning path in upper-level athletics. Armstead as a boy and teenager often worked out with local high school, college and professional athletes, and Guss didn’t hesitate to nod at a big guy to give the young buck a forearm to the chest in a game of pickup hoops.
Guss implored work ethic and humility into his boys. Armstead is still rooted in those principals. He’s a natural when he is the one being hotly pursued, engulfed by a swarm of children at youth football camps he hosts in Sacramento or Elk Grove in the summer. At these settings, Armstead stresses fitness, fun, reading and living a good life at any age.
Off-field charity and gifts
Armstead’s best work has been off the field. He raised more than $100,000 at his annual 91Six Charity gala, a fundraiser for the Armstead Academic Project in Sacramento for underserved youth in his home region, inspired to make a difference.
Armstead is in a sport big on numbers — he has 10 sacks for a 13-3 team, for example — but the numbers that especially concern him off the field are the studies that show that more than two-thirds of students who are not able to read proficiently by the end of the fourth grade will end up on welfare or jail.
“I’ve been so blessed in my life that it’s my responsibility to give back to a community that helped raise me,” Armstead said before Tuesday’s practice at Levi’s Stadium, where on Saturday the 49ers host the Minnesota Vikings in an NFC Divisional playoff. “I take ownership in that responsibility, to lend a helping hand, to help others.”
Said Joe Cattolico, Armstead’s prep football coach, “I tell people that Arik is one of the best people I’ve every coached, and I’ve coached a lot of good people. I’m just so happy for him and his on-field success. None of his success has changed the man. Sometimes, there’s criticism with too much emphasis on sports. With Arik, he’s using that platform of football to help others. I love that about him.”
Carolina Panthers linebacker Shaq Thompson is close friends with Armstead. Thompson excelled at Grant High at the same time Armstead was a prep.
As prep All-Americans, Armstead and Thompson considered attending Cal on scholarship together but wound up at different schools — Armstead at Oregon and Thompson at Washington. They trained together for weeks before the 2015 NFL Draft when both became first-round picks.
“Arik has always been a real good guy,” Thompson said. “He was raised by great parents. He is the one that if he calls you family, he will do anything for you. He gives back to his home city, trying to change the education system, so that should tell you what kind of human being he is. He cares.”
Thompson added, “as a player, he’s a different human on that field. He has a whole other side you don’t want any part of on that field. He’s a problem for offensive linemen — physical, tough, athletic, a grinder and hard worker. He’s been like that since high school.”
Armstead as a prep terror
Armstead was the sort of field-tilting, shadow-casting figure in high school that you’d want leading your team.
Let the other team get a load of the big load, all 6-7 and 275 pounds of arms, torso, girth and burst packed into a uniform and shoulder pads. He was the sure thing, a can’t-miss prospect.
“We tried to make sure Arik got off the bus first,” said a laughing Cattolico, Armstead’s prep coach.
Armstead was at times overwhelmingly dominant despite laboring through a shoulder ailment his senior season that limited his impact. Players need their shoulders to survive the trenches at any level.
Some high school opponents viewed Armstead as dogging it on certain plays, not understanding the severity of an injury that Cattolico certainly didn’t talk about.
“Arik played 14 games his senior season on a bum shoulder that basically didn’t work,” Cattolico said. “Of all the players, he could have shut it down. He didn’t want to. It was important to him to play, to be there for his teammates.”
Said Armstead now, “I felt it was important to keep playing, to help my team win another championship, that this was something we could remember for the rest of our lives.”
Granite Bay lineman Gavin Andrews went head-to-head in the trenches with Armstead in the 2011 Sac-Joaquin Section Division I championship game. Granite Bay won a slugfest 30-24 a year after Pleasant Grove won the title. A lot of eyes were on the big guys going at it. Andrews, at 6-4, more than held his own against Armstead and went on to start on the offensive line at Oregon State.
“Facing Armstead was a challenge,” Andrews said this week. “I remember him having those long arms and standing me up a handful of times, both in high school and college, and I felt it was a good battle.”
Armstead was a five-star recruit as an offensive tackle but his heart was on defense, to be the pursuer.
“His talent and skill on the defensive side of the ball in high school was off the chart,” said former Roseville High coach Larry Cunha. “We couldn’t block him, we couldn’t block him with double teams and we couldn’t run away from him — just a dominant guy. He was in the same category as (one-time Roseville star and eventual Patriots star) Tedy Bruschi with the ability to impact and effect a game without touching the ball.”
Notre Dame’s shameless hoops pursuit
For all of his football prowess, Armstead also dazzled in basketball.
He could run the floor, move around the paint with light feet and soft hands on a regal body. He could pound it inside, hit short jumpers and defend.
Notre Dame baskeball coach Mike Brey was hooked. When Armstead was a Pleasant Grove senior, Brey showed up on campus for a winter visit. He wound up in John DePonte’s math class. In that setting, Brey continued his recruitment of Armstead, telling him that if he graduated from high school early — that week! — he could be in the Irish starting lineup as a forward that weekend.
One problem: DePonte was also Armstead’s prep basketball coach. He also didn’t want recruiting to sully Armstead’s senior season.
“It was, ‘Wait, do you hear what you’re saying?’” DePonte recalled with a laugh this week. “I’m happy for Arik, the kid, on one hand, but if you’re wondering if I’m excited to lose the most dominant basketball force in the section in January and jump up an down with a ticker-tape parade, no. He wasn’t sensitive to my situation.”
DePonte said he was most impressed with how Armstead handled the recruiting pressure.
“His dad played college basketball, his brother Armond played in college and pro ball, so Arik’s mind was way beyond most at that level because he had been exposed to it,” DePonte said. “We enjoyed his time. He was so ready for the next level.”
DePonte said he ran into Armstead at a game at Golden 1 Center two years ago for a Kings game and his old player still deferred to the coach.
“Arik and his dad say hello, and a Kings employee invited them to use courtside seats,” DePonte said. “Arik said, ‘Take my coach and his kids.’ We all went to midcourt. That’s Arik. That’s the kind of guy he is.”
Contract year for Armstead
Armstead has never been motivated by money, but he’s not going to turn it down, either. In the brutish nature of the NFL, it is wise to collect while your body can handle it.
Armstead produced nine sacks of his 19 career sacks in his first four 49ers seasons, some campaigns undone by hand or shoulder ailments. He underwent season-ending shoulder surgery in 2016 and missed the final 10 games of his 2017 season with a broken hand.
Along the way, Armstead noticed the social media backlash, saving posts such as “GET RID OF ARIK ARMSTEAD. #BUST”
“Feels great to be healthy,” Armstead said. “That’s the other part of sports — injuries and fighting through it. With the hand, I went in to make a tackle and broke it. Fluke, random and nothing I could do. To be really full, you need good luck with injuries.”
At 26, Armstead looms as a hot free-agent commodity. His contract expires at the end of this season, which he expects to end in Super Bowl LIV in Miami.
Armstead’s focus is on the here and now. He marvels at how the 49ers have gone from 2-14 in 2016 and 4-12 a year ago to home-field advantage throughout the NFC playoffs.
“The team success this year has been great to be a part of, especially after all the adversity and losses we had,” Armstead said. “As for the offseason, we’ll see what happens. I just want to help us win games. I can’t think of anything beyond that.”
Armstead would prefer to remain with the 49ers, a Northern California guy, saying, “I love it here.”
49ers defensive leader Richard Sherman said earlier this season of Armstead’s pending free agency, “The Brinks truck is going to back up for him. Beep, beep, beep.”
Preferably, the truck is located very close to the community that still has a deep affection for him.
This story was originally published January 9, 2020 at 4:00 AM.