Anthony McFarland Sr. raced down the longest hallway at Bishop McNamara High, legs churning and heart pounding.

A cold, rainy Maryland afternoon forced the track team indoors for the first practice of the 1989 season. By this point, McFarland had established himself as the fastest kid in the senior class — and well beyond it. With Olympic aspirations, he began to dream of how far his legs could take him in life.

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That day, the track team lined up in pairs of two. Ready. Go. The coach told McFarland and the others to jog half-speed and stop at the water fountain at the end of the hall.

“We take off running half-speed,” McFarland recalled by phone last month. “And as I’m running at half speed, of course, it turns into a competition.”

The sparkplug senior turned on the jets and exploded past his challenger. But as he soared past the water fountain and tried to break down to stop, he slipped and tumbled into a set of glass doors. The glass shattered, tearing open his right arm and severing the main artery.

“I look over and my arm was just dangling by the bone,” he recalled.

As the pool of blood grew around McFarland, he slipped into a comatose state. And the way he tells the story, he heard a voice.

“We’re here now. So I need you to make a decision whether you want to live or die,” the voice said.

McFarland didn’t understand.

“We’re here now. I want you to make a decision, whether you want to live or die,” the voice said again.

Again, McFarland said he didn’t understand.

“We’re here now. I want you to make a decision whether you want to live or die,” the voice said a third time.

“‘Well, just make my firstborn better than I ever would have been,’” McFarland said. “And then as soon as I said that, I woke up.

“That’s where the Anthony Jr. story begins.”

You know Anthony McFarland Jr.’s name. But only once you hear Anthony McFarland Sr.’s story will you understand how the RB got here and what drives him to keep running toward his dreams.

Keep an eye out for the story dropping tomorrow morning on @TheAthletic

— Mike DeFabo (@MikeDeFabo) August 22, 2023

Through his first three NFL seasons, Anthony McFarland Jr. has toiled mostly on the Pittsburgh Steelers roster’s fringe, with just 51 career touches in the regular season. Last year, he spent all but one game relegated to the practice squad. But as he fights for his opportunity in the Steelers’ deep backfield — with just one preseason game remaining to make his case for a roster spot — his father’s prayer and resilient spirit provide the example to keep McFarland running toward his NFL dreams.

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McFarland Sr. opened his eyes to find a team of paramedics struggling to stop the bleeding. They loaded him onto a stretcher, and one paramedic sat on top to apply pressure to the wound. McFarland could feel her tears falling onto his face as she kept repeating over and over, “Don’t you die on me. Don’t you die on me.”

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McFarland was rolled out to the football field and life-flighted to Prince George’s Community Hospital, where doctors sprinted to him as the helicopter landed.

They rushed him into the operating room for a complicated, 19-hour surgery during which they took a vein from his leg and put it in his right arm to repair the artery. Lead surgeon Dr. Jimmy Chow told the McFarland family he hadn’t seen an injury this severe since the Vietnam War.

Six months in the hospital and about 15 surgeries later, McFarland was able to keep his arm. But to this day, he still has no feeling or use in his hand.

“I had to learn how to live all over again,” he said.

Feeling lucky to be alive, McFarland began a new chapter of his life, teaching himself to do everything with his left hand.

“I’ve always been a very strong-willed person, and I always liked to do things on my own,” McFarland said. “I do more with just one hand than people do with two. There’s nothing that I can’t do.

“I used to always say to myself, ‘What if nobody’s home and my shoes need to be tied?’ Or I need to go to a meeting, I need my tie to be tied. What if somebody’s not home? Then what are you gonna do?”

His life had been forever changed. But his hope for the future remained.

For years, Anthony and Toni McFarland tried for the firstborn son to fulfill his prayer, without any luck. Finally, only once they had begun exploring adoption, Toni found out she was pregnant. Neither of them could believe it at first.

But on March 4, 1999, a son was born in Hyattsville, Md. McFarland Sr. put his faith in his firstborn son, passing on his unfulfilled dreams and his name, Anthony.

Dressed in full pads, with a toy Washington helmet on his head and a football in his arms, a 2-year-old Anthony McFarland Jr. sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the TV.

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Each time the quarterback hiked the ball, he bolted around the room, pretending he was the ball carrier. When the player got tackled, he tumbled to the ground as if he, too, had been leveled by an imaginary linebacker.

“He would do that the entire game,” McFarland Sr. said. “We started looking at each other, like, what is he doing? Like what is going on here? He did that for years.”

Like his father, McFarland Jr. is small in stature — he’s one of the shortest players on the Steelers’ roster at 5-9 — but he’s also a tightly coiled bundle of fast-twitch muscle. Even before middle school, McFarland emerged as a contender on the youth track scene. But sometimes it seemed his body was moving faster than his mind. Each season, he missed qualifying for the national championships by just fractions of seconds.

The hardest moment came when McFarland was about 11 years old. For the third consecutive year, he missed his chance by a stride. He came off the track, found his dad in the stands and buried his head in his shoulder.

“He cried his eyes out,” McFarland Sr. said. “I said, ‘Well, just keep working. Just keep working at it. Just keep working at it. It’s gonna happen for you.’

“I used to always tell (my three kids), look at your pops. Don’t give up, and keep working. … Because people will tell you you can’t do something, and they’ll have you wanting to give up. Never give up. The only person you can depend on in life is yourself.”

McFarland Jr. turned that failure into fuel. By middle school, he grew into a perennial national contender. He took home gold at the 2010 and 2011 USA Youth Outdoor Track & Field Championships, running an 11.53 100-meter dash as a 13-year-old. As a high school freshman, he filled in for the injured anchor of the 4×100 team on short notice — driving two hours from Maryland to Philadelphia — and helped the group win at the prestigious Penn Relays. His father beamed with pride.

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While McFarland was setting records and turning heads on the track, his future was always on the football field.

He enrolled at Maryland prep powerhouse DeMatha Catholic, much to his father’s dismay, considering they’re the archrival of his alma mater, Bishop McNamara. McFarland Sr. begged the coaches to try his son as a slot receiver, fearing he was too small to withstand the contact at running back.

During McFarland Jr.’s freshman year, the coaching staff elevated him to varsity for a game against, of all teams, Bishop McNamara. Against his father’s wishes, the coaching staff put him in at running back late in the fourth quarter.

“When I tell you I was pissed, my heart was racing 100 miles an hour,” McFarland Sr. remembered. “I’m like, I can’t believe he did this.”

On his first varsity touch, McFarland Jr. bolted 75 yards for a touchdown. They put him back in for the next series. He took off for a 50-yard gain.

After the win, DeMatha coach Elijah Brooks approached the father of the fast freshman: “You still don’t want him to play running back?”

As a sophomore, the speedster became the engine propelling DeMatha’s offense, rushing for 1,124 yards. He led the Stags to the Washington Catholic Athletic Conference Athletics title with more than 900 combined rushing and receiving yards as a junior.

Ain't nothing like playing the game of football I swear …

— Anthony Mcfarland Jr (@AnttMacc_) October 18, 2014

Offers flooded in. Georgia, Miami, Alabama and so many others were vying for McFarland, a four-star prospect rated as the third-best all-purpose back in the country, per the 247Sports Composite.

McFarland began his senior season of high school, like his father so many years earlier, full of pride and potential. But also like his father, an injury during the first scrimmage of his senior year changed the trajectory of his life.

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On the first play of the scrimmage, McFarland hit the hole, felt a lineman fall on his leg and heard a loud pop.

McFarland Jr. walked off the field fueled by adrenaline — and collapsed on the sideline. X-rays confirmed their fears. The promising young back had snapped his fibula and torn several ligaments in his ankle. His senior year was done before it even started.

“I’m not gonna lie. After I got injured, I was scared,” McFarland said. “I didn’t know if schools are gonna treat me the same, even though everybody was like your offer is still good.”

While McFarland rehabbed the injury at the University of Maryland, he began to rethink his college decision. It ate at him. Even the night before signing day, he paced around the house all night, still unsure where he’d commit.

Laying in his bed, McFarland Sr. heard cabinets open and close. The refrigerator door open and close.

“I got up that morning. I said, ‘All right, what do you want to do?” McFarland Sr. remembered. “And he was like, ‘My gut is telling me to stay home and play for my hometown.’”

In a Snapchat video, McFarland Jr. took the metro to the airport and teased the diehard fan bases with boarding passes to Miami and Tuscaloosa. But when it came time to announce his decision, he let the world know he was staying home, where his father and family would be nearby for support.

The start of McFarland’s college journey in many ways mirrors the early days of his NFL career. Entering his redshirt freshman season at Maryland, he was buried on the depth chart. He caught a rail route for a big gain against Bowling Green but mostly toiled as a backup.

“There weren’t enough footballs to go around,” said now-Steelers offensive coordinator Matt Canada, who served as Maryland’s interim head coach in 2018. “I remember Ant having some frustrations early.”

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Injuries opened the door for an opportunity, and the redshirt freshman took advantage. In an early November game, he broke several big runs on the way to a 210-yard outburst. That set a Maryland freshman record that would stand for all of seven days. The following week, McFarland one-upped himself with a 298-yard statement against Ohio State.

“I wish I had 300, man,” McFarland said with a smile.

Before the game, then-Ohio State coach Urban Meyer called McFarland “one of the most talented, unheard-of players in America.” It wouldn’t stay that way for long. The electric performance in front of a national television audience put McFarland on the map. For the first time, scouts started showing up in the stands, and McFarland began to dream of draft day.

After an All-American freshman campaign, McFarland battled a high-ankle sprain in his second season and finished with 614 yards and eight touchdowns. Another difficult decision loomed. The 2020 draft class was especially deep at running back, with Clyde Edwards-Helaire, Jonathan Taylor, D’Andre Swift, J.K. Dobbins and many others expected to go early.

But the McFarland family was swayed by the injuries that changed their lives. They decided to bet on his 4.44 speed, knowing it was going to take time for the redshirt sophomore to develop. And in the fourth round (pick No. 124), the Steelers selected the speedy scat back, making him the 13th running back off the board.

Don't blink 💨@AnttMacc_

— Pittsburgh Steelers (@steelers) July 1, 2020

“The biggest fear for me was injuries,” McFarland Sr. said. “It came down to, we need to take our chances with the league while we have it.”

After the fans cleared out of Acrisure Stadium and the whistles faded into the distant echo following a game last season, McFarland Sr. stood in a parking lot waiting for his son to emerge.

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After earning 33 carries as a rookie in 2020, McFarland Jr. appeared in just two games in 2021, carrying the ball three times. Entering the 2022 season, the Steelers cut McFarland from the 53-man roster before eventually re-signing him to the practice squad.

“I was just miserable thinking about like, what do I have to do to be the pro that I want to be?” McFarland Jr. said. “I was having a lot of doubt. Like, is this for me? I really started questioning, what am I going to do to take that extra step to show that I belong?”

McFarland Sr. sensed his son’s growing frustration. He saw the same look in his son as he did years earlier, when he failed to qualify for the national track championships.

“You don’t have that look anymore,” McFarland Sr. said. “You don’t have that fire in your eye. Let’s work on getting that Eye of the Tiger back. That’s what I call it. That dog. That I don’t care about anything or anyone. I’m coming after it.”

Even after the pep talk, McFarland Jr. grappled with his role and the frustrations that built each week he was forced to watch his teammates play without him.

His mother, Toni, introduced him to meditation to help calm the anxiety and depression that accompanied his disappointment. And from his father, he had an example of how to keep fighting when it feels like your opportunity has been taken away.

“I always looked up to my dad,” McFarland Jr. said. “He was like my hero because even though he only has one (working) arm, it never affected him. He never got down. He wasn’t afraid to be him and still do stuff.”

This season, there’s reason to believe things will be different for McFarland.

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He entered training camp as the clear third back on a team that historically keeps three running backs. Throughout camp, the Steelers have installed concepts highlighting his skill set, lining him up in the slot in the Pony package — a two-running back formation. He has exposed linebackers who try to cover him downfield and tested edge defenders with his speed on jet sweeps.

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McFarland showcased his speed during the first preseason game in Tampa Bay, bursting off right tackle for a 14-yard touchdown. However, in the second preseason game, he toted the ball nine times for just 2 yards (stats skewed by a Bills goal-line stand).

In McFarland Jr.’s words, the new season is like a “breath of fresh air.”

.@AnttMacc_ for 6️⃣

📲: Stream on NFL+

— Pittsburgh Steelers (@steelers) August 12, 2023

“The wish for him would be it’s similar to Maryland,” Canada said. “He kept getting better, kept doing his job, kept fighting, kept clawing, and then when he gets his chance, he’ll be ready to play. We’ll have to wait and see how that plays in the fall.”

Added coach Mike Tomlin: “I’m excited for him in seeing if he can carve out an increased role for himself.”

In many ways, his father’s prayer has already been answered just by McFarland reaching the NFL. But now, as he fights to make the roster, he continues to use his father’s story as inspiration and an example.

“It inspires me a lot to go hard,” McFarland said. “Even though I’m still not where I want to be, it’s like a different type of hunger in me to just stay resilient. I think about my dad and him pushing through and expecting me to do the same thing. He showed me whatever you’re going through in life, you still gotta be there, keep pushing. You can’t have insecurities or be scared just because you had a setback.”

(Top photo: Kim Klement Neitzel / USA Today)