49ers’ Deebo Samuel goes deep on personal life in Mother’s Day tribute for GQ

Deebo Samuel went in-depth on his private life and his evolution into a 49ers’ star by posting quite a Mother’s Day tribute.

Samuel went so far as to say his stepmother, Precious Martin, “saved my life.”

“When my life was on the line, it was Precious who saved me,” Samuel said in a first-person piece for GQ.com. “When I had nowhere to go, it was Precious who got me out of that dark place.

“She took me under her wing even though I wasn’t her child. She pointed me in the right direction of life to get me where I am today.”

Samuel is entering his third season with the 49ers, and he’s looking to rebound from last year’s collection of injuries after reaching the Super Bowl as a rookie.

His GQ piece shares a lot about his South Carolina childhood, and while he credits Martin for much, he also acknowledges the impact his biological mother, Felicia Winn, his grandmother, Kathy Winn, and his brother, Tyquan, have had on him.

His most flowery praise was for Martin amid these key passages from the GQ tribute:

— Samuel recalled being in ninth grade with no place to live when he moved in with Martin and his father, Galen, going from Spartanburg to Inman, South Carolina.

“When I had to buckle down for school, she stopped me from going back to Spartanburg to see friends and family because there was only a lot of pain there. Her and Galen threatened to take ball away from me. Yo, I wasn’t having that! Ever since then, I was on the up and up.”

— Redshirting his freshman year at South Carolina “took a massive toll on me,” but then came a string of injuries that made Samuel want to quit, including fractures to his left ankle and right foot, plus pulled hamstrings.

Martin encouraged him to push through those pains, just as she did last offseason when he broke his left foot in a workout away from the 49ers facility during the pandemic. “I remembered what Precious told me about adversity. This was just another test,” Samuel said. “I called her as soon as I left the stadium that day, and we got through that test. Even now, I call her when I leave the stadium. I call her every day.”

— After watching his biological mother get caught up in “the street life,” Samuel vowed to help her once he made the NFL, and he’s followed through in sending her to a “rehab facility to get her mind straight.” He then bought her a home and wrote that she’s working a steady job at a restaurant and “she’s good.”

— Samuel also bought a house for his older brother, who toughened him into a physical “animal” when they put pads on at their grandmother’s house and “he was knocking…my…head off!” Although he said Tyquan was the best athlete Spartanburg has seen, trouble found him, and a call to him in jail “did something to me. It made me mad, upset. I couldn’t bear it. He got out when I was already in college and started coming to my games at South Carolina.” They’ve been tight ever since, again.