UB football coach Pete Lembo discusses linebackers Red Murdock and Shaun Dolac, who lead the nation in tackles.
Elaine Moore issued a challenge for her eighth grade students at Carter G. Woodson Middle School in southeast Virginia.
Get a perfect score on your state standardized test in English, and we will have a dinner party at my house for you and your family.
Red Murdock suddenly had a new goal in front of him. Even in the eighth grade, meeting his goal wasn't just about being competitive. It was about exercising thought. It was about preparation. It was about motivation.
It illustrated Murdock's desire to learn, his need to achieve and to meet his own high expectations.
"I'm a bit of a perfectionist," said Murdock, a linebacker on the University at Buffalo football team. "In every aspect of everything I put my name to, I want to be the best at it, no matter what it is. Every semester, it's a 4.0 goal, so I'm very upset that my GPA wasn't there.
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"But it's also a combination of being in very blessed, very fortunate positions."
Moore estimates that of the more than 3,500 students she's taught in the Hopewell schools over the last 30-plus years, maybe one or two students a year get a perfect score on the three-pronged Standards of Learning for English exam made up of prompts for grammar, reading comprehension and writing.
Including Murdock.
Now a redshirt sophomore at UB, Murdock played football when he was 7 years old and quickly realized it would take him to new heights, not just as an athlete but in school and in life. He applied the same desire he had to acing a test to being the best in football and found the thrill in leading people, finding friends and being a part of something that was bigger than him, a group working towards a common goal.
He even realized he could play college football.
Murdock found out, though, that the path to college football isn't necessarily linear.
He wasn't a 5-star linebacker, and he didn't play the bulk of his junior season in the fall of 2019 due to a left hip injury that required surgery after the season, one in which Murdock helped his team finish 15-0 and win the 2019 Virginia High School League Class 3 state championship.
Education became the bedrock for Murdock as he pursued playing football at the Division I level. A detour to military school brought a chance encounter with UB's coaching staff that helped set Murdock on the road to becoming one of the nation's top linebackers this year.
Delayed senior season
Ricky Irby is Hopewell's football coach and met Murdock at the same dinner party Moore held for her high-achieving students. His daughter, Campbell, also aced the state exam, but Irby and Murdock talked about football at the dinner.
A couple years later at the high school, Murdock transformed himself from a defensive lineman into a linebacker who was on the same team as TreVeyon Henderson, one of the top high school running backs in the country for the 2021 recruiting cycle, who is now at Ohio State.
Murdock's junior year was supposed to be his breakout year, but he was nagged by a hip injury that sidelined him for the first nine games. He returned to play five games and helped Hopewell win the state championship. He was named the top defensive player in the state championship game, but he did it through a nagging pain. After the season, he had surgery to repair a torn labrum.
His confidence was down. He knew how much work he had put into preparing for that year.
"He was an unbelievable player for us, but at the same time, going into the recruiting period, he didn't have a whole lot of film because he missed games," Irby said.
Which meant that the 2020 season was going to be invaluable to Murdock's goal of playing Division I football ... until the Covid-19 pandemic struck. The VHSL postponed its 2020 high school football season to the spring of 2021. Murdock flourished, but only Division II and Division III programs showed interest.
"That was a really tough time," Murdock said. "I thank God for my supporting cast because my coaches, my family and close friends, they believed in me. Because I didn't believe in anything about my future, at all."
Nothing else was lost, though, because of his academic success.
He graduated high school in 2021 with a high school degree and with an associate's degree. But he didn't head directly to college. He still had a spot on a Division I football roster to earn, so he spent a semester at prep school.
"It was more like, 'Dang, all this work might go for nothing,' but it was about pressing on, just to give myself a little bit of a chance," Murdock said.
Fork Union to Buffalo
The most difficult thing for Murdock to do at Fork Union Military Academy?
Cut off his hair.
He wore dreadlocks in high school, but as part of the military-based culture at the private, all-boys boarding school less than 60 miles northwest of Richmond, he had to be clean-shaven and had to wear his hair short.
Even Frank Arritt, the football coach at Fork Union, remembers Murdock's coif.
"He had some nice-looking hair before he got here," Arritt quipped with a laugh. "I look at his photo every year, to see how long his hair gets."
But there was a lot more Murdock embraced about the carefully structured regimen in the fall of 2021 at Fork Union. The 5 a.m. wake-up times. The lack of Wi-Fi in the dormitories. Lights out by 9:45 p.m.
Murdock, with a laugh, admitted that he fell asleep past 10 p.m.
But he thrived in the structure.
"I grew up as the middle child of a single mom with six kids," Murdock said. "I wasn't around that much structure, having people breathe down your neck. But I was never really resistant towards it.
"I went on a visit there and I was so uncomfortable! But I knew that's where I needed to go because it was going to push me to places I'd never pushed myself before."
He also caught the eye of UB tight ends coach Ron Whitcomb that fall. Whitcomb, Arritt said, visited Fork Union to scout a player but couldn't stop watching a 6-foot-3 linebacker.
That was Murdock, and that was who the Bulls wanted to sign and they wanted to move him to the middle of the defense with Shaun Dolac and James Patterson.
Murdock helped Fork Union to an undefeated season in 2021 and he signed with the Bulls in December 2021. He enrolled in college in January 2022.
"He had the size, he had the strength, he had the mental capacity," Arritt said of Murdock. "He was a leader. Every day, he built his teammates up and pushed them, but he was a business-oriented person. He wasn't a back-and-forth, mouthy person. Teammates rallied around him early on, and that's why we had such success with his team."
He played in 12 games, including six starts, in 2023 as he filled in at linebacker for Dolac, who missed the final eight games of the season due to a high left ankle sprain. Murdock had 60 tackles, including 9.5 for loss, two sacks, four forced fumbles and two quarterback hurries.
This year, Murdock is second in the nation in tackles (143, behind Dolac's 159) and has five forced fumbles and four quarterback hurries in 12 games.
"He was a younger guy there (in 2023) and he was a great player last year, but he took another step this year," said Bills rookie linebacker Joe Andreessen, who teamed with Murdock as one of UB's starting linebackers in 2023. "Seeing him grow, it's definitely been great. If Shaun leaves after this year and goes into the NFL draft, Red's probably going take over that team and, hopefully, continue that success."
Optimism beats adversity
Murdock has established himself as one of the Mid-American Conference's top linebackers and has helped UB to a turnaround season and a berth in the Bahamas Bowl on Jan. 4 against Liberty at Thomas A. Robinson National Stadium in Nassau.
He has a degree in psychology and is working on a master's degree in education studies at UB. As long as he is in school and has the ability to get an education, he wants to maximize the opportunity, with the goal of being a counselor and working in sports psychology once his playing days end.
He's only the second in his family to graduate from high school. He's the first in his family to earn a college degree. He aspires to be a role model to his five siblings and to his classmates at Hopewell. He wants to show that even in the struggles, there's always a goal to reach.
"His background shaped who he is, and that's why he carries himself the way he carries himself," said Andreessen. "He doesn't take anything for granted."
Even Moore, Murdock's eighth grade teacher, remembers her student's diligence and determination. Every assignment was turned in on time. If he wasn't pleased with his grade on an assignment, he asked for another, to make sure he got what he considered an acceptable grade.
His mother, Kimberly, she recalled, constantly told her son that he was intelligent, and that he was capable of just about any goal he set for himself.
She recently found an essay that Murdock wrote as an eighth grader and shared an excerpt of it with The News.
"Open your eyes. There are so many great things in life right in front of you, you just have to recognize them."
"His mom always encouraged him to be optimistic," Moore said.
That optimism continues to fuel Murdock.
"I was always fighting to create a better life for myself," Murdock said. "I've wanted a lot better. There was never any sort of quit in me."
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College/high school sports enterprise reporter
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