Third-string quarterback C.J. Beathard hasn’t taken a snap for the 49ers this season, and that doesn’t figure to change at Super Bowl LIV, but the 26-year-old, a valuable member of the NFC champions’ scout team, will receive a ring if San Francisco prevails against the Kansas City Chiefs. Such a triumph still would leave the former Iowa star three Super Bowl titles shy of tying his grandfather, Pro Football Hall of Famer and legendary former Redskins general manager Bobby Beathard, for most in the family.
When nearly a dozen members of the Beathard family gather in Miami Gardens, Fla., for Sunday’s game, there will be two notable absences, one of which will cast a pall over what should have been a strictly celebratory occasion. Bobby, who turned 83 last week and continues to battle Alzheimer’s, will watch from his home in Tennessee. Clay Beathard, C.J.'s youngest brother, was fatally stabbed outside a Nashville bar six weeks ago, and the family believes he will be looking down from heaven.
“Clay was always my biggest fan,” C.J. said at Clay’s funeral at Grace Chapel in Franklin, Tenn., one week after the 22-year-old and former high school teammate Paul Trapeni III, 21, were killed in the early hours of Dec. 21. “He’s all of our biggest fans. He’s the most proud guy there is of his family and the people that care about him."
“In the last six weeks, I had a son go to the Super Bowl and another son go to heaven,” Clay and C.J.'s father, Casey Beathard, who was a star quarterback at Oakton High and a regular at Redskins training camp while his dad was the GM in Washington, told ESPN.
Perhaps no one better understands the blend of grief and joy that this weekend’s Beathard family reunion will bring than Casey’s middle son, 25-year-old Tucker, who spent 22 years as a big brother to Clay while also looking up to C.J.
When Clay graduated from Battle Ground Academy in Franklin in 2016 and prepared to go off to college, Tucker, a country musician like his father, wrote a song titled “I’ll Take on the World With You (Brother).” It was an ode to the relationship he shared with Clay and to some extent C.J., and it has taken on added significance since Clay’s death.
“Brother, let me hold your trouble when it gets too heavy,” the chorus begins.
“As Clay’s older brother, it was just heavy on my heart as he was starting a new chapter of his life to write out some of the feelings I was feeling for him,” Tucker said in a phone interview. “I went in one morning and wrote a whole song about the relationships and dynamics between the three of us. I think it was all pretty spot on. We had a special bond as the three best friends brothers could be.”
“Tucker, Clay and I were real close growing up,” C.J. said at the funeral, with Tucker and their two sisters, Charly and Tatum, at his side. “We were three best friends. We did everything together."
When the Beathard boys weren’t busy throwing a football around with their dad or being home-schooled by their mom, Susan, they spent a lot of time making music.
“We’d always get together and jam,” said Tucker, who has an album due out this year. “If they wanted to, there’s no telling what they could’ve done with music. Clay specifically, he started playing guitar before I did. From a really young age, he was really, really advanced and could’ve been insanely good. I always knew music was for me, and I got bit by that bug.”
Clay followed in C.J.'s footsteps by playing quarterback in college. He transferred to Long Island University in New York from Iowa Western Community College last year and appeared in seven games for the Sharks before a shoulder injury ended his junior season. Clay was home on winter break, when, while out in Nashville with Trapeni, “an unwanted advancement by a man toward a woman” they both knew led to a fight outside the bar. Nashville police later arrested 23-year-old Michael Mosley and charged him with criminal homicide.
Tucker and C.J. both said they were grateful for the 22 years they had with Clay. Tucker, who isn’t much of a gamer, is thankful that his two brothers finally convinced him to join them in online games of Call of Duty in December. During one of their multiplayer sessions, while communicating with one another on headsets, Clay revealed that his latest tattoo, which included a reference to the Book of Jeremiah, featured a misspelling.
“It’s the thought that counts,” Tucker said at the funeral, prompting laughter.
At Super Bowl media night Monday, C.J. told the Tennessee Titans’ website that the past month has been the hardest of his life, “without a doubt.” He and Tucker have leaned on each other, fellow family members and their faith throughout the healing process.
“It’s actually been a pretty crazy thing to see what it’s done for our family,” Tucker said. “Honestly, it doesn’t make sense as far as how we’re getting through this the way we are. There’s an underlying peace that’s unexplainable, other than really giving everything we’ve got to let God get us through it."
Tucker has heard countless stories over the years about his grandfather’s four championships and seven Super Bowl appearances as a talent evaluator. Sunday will mark his first time at pro football’s pinnacle event, and while he’s excited for the spectacle and to see C.J. realize a dream, he wishes Clay were there to experience it with him.
“I’m just as fired up as I probably would be if he was starting — and I’m a little less nervous than I probably would be,” Tucker said of C.J.'s third-string role. “We know Clay’s in a better place, and we’re down here trying to make him proud.”
When Clay was alive, C.J. said, he would receive a text from him before every one of his games, telling him that he was the best quarterback he had ever seen.
“I know there’s a lot of siblings out there or parents that would tell your kids, ‘Yeah, you’re the best, you’re this, that,’ but I’m telling you, when Clay said it, he meant it and believed it,” C.J. said. “And so I have an obligation to not only God but Clay to make him proud and strive to be the best guy and player that he knows that I am.”
