Howie is a longtime Minnesota journalist, independent columnist and author covering sports, power and civic life. His daily column is sponsored by Lyric Kitchen . Bar of Duluth.
Minnesota Monsters star wide receiver Jamal Couch has spent much of his professional football life carrying a label that sounds flattering on the surface and frustrating once you live inside it long enough.
In NFL scouting language, Couch is what evaluators sometimes call a unicorn — a player with rare physical traits who does not fit cleanly into one of the league’s neat positional boxes. That word can sound like praise, and in part it is.
At 6-foot-6, 220 pounds, with long arms, a broad catch radius, and a 43-inch vertical leap that immediately changes the geometry of a passing game, Couch looks like the kind of athlete scouts are paid to notice. He also looks, on paper anyway, like the kind of receiver the NFL ought to have room for.
And yet football, particularly at its highest level, is not always about admiration. It is about definition. Teams want to know exactly what a player is, exactly where he lines up and exactly how he fits into the weekly math of a 53-man roster. Couch has spent years living in the gray area between admiration and uncertainty, seen by evaluators as a rare body type, but not always as a clean answer.
He does not speak about that reality with bitterness. He speaks about it like a man who has learned how the business works and has decided the only useful response is to keep showing up.
“Pretty much be as available as possible,” Couch said at an event at the Heritage Center on Saturday afternoon, when asked about my mental and physical approach. “I'll do anything coach will ask no matter how big, small, tall, fast, no matter what, just always be available.”
That mindset now brings him back to Duluth, where Couch is preparing to report to training camp later this month with the new Minnesota Monsters at Amsoil Arena. For a first-year Arena Football One franchise looking for instant playmakers, Couch arrives as more than an intriguing name. He arrives as a proven professional talent still trying to force the football world to make a final decision on him.
His path has already taken him close to the league every player in this sport chases. Couch said he came out in 2018 or 2019 and spent “a couple stints with the Seahawks,” eventually moving in and out of Seattle’s practice-squad orbit over three years. More recently, he said, he had a private workout with the Miami Dolphins.
“I'm pretty much just chiming and chopping, trying to get back in the door,” he said.
That is the life of the almost-made-it player, and there are far more of them in professional football than fans ever realize. The public tends to see the stars on Sundays. What it does not always see is the vast middle ground underneath — the players who can absolutely play, who are good enough to stay on the radar, good enough to get workouts, good enough to keep coaches interested, but who for one reason or another never quite lock down the permanent chair.
Couch knows that world well. He said he never got a call-up with Seattle, and when asked why, he did not offer excuses. Timing, injuries and circumstance all seem to live somewhere in his answer. He said a serious hamstring injury changed the course of things.
“I had a stage three hamstring tear and pretty much after that, it was pretty much we parted ways and I’ve been playing the arena since,” Couch said.
Even now, years later, there is no self-pity in him. There is some frustration, certainly. There almost has to be. Competitors do not get that close to the NFL without imagining themselves on the field, under the lights, instead of running practice reps and waiting for another conversation about potential.
“It was very frustrating because we’re all competitors,” Couch said. “Just practicing every day, just coming out, giving the look. It gets frustrating because you want to play in the game, you know what you can do, but you really just have to wait on your time. Everything doesn’t always work in your favor, but like I said, it’s exciting just to be there because it’s very few people that get picked for the opportunity.”
That may be the most revealing thing about Couch. He carries both truths at once. He understands how hard the business can be, and he still sounds grateful to have been close enough to touch it. That combination — realism without self-destruction — is part of what makes him interesting.
So is the fact that he still believes the best version of his football story may not have been written yet.
Couch said he has changed his approach physically, trying to become leaner and faster rather than building himself into a more muscular frame. He still sees himself, first and foremost, as a wide receiver, not a tweener and not a converted tight end. He believes that version of himself is still worth betting on.
“I’m trying to do things different,” Couch said. “I know doing stuff the way I was doing, it got me there, but it’s pretty much something that I was doing wrong that was keeping me out of being on the Final 52.”
He believes one of those adjustments has been simple.
“So back then I was trying to have a more muscular build, but now I got a slimmer build so I can move faster and better,” he said.
That matters in arena football, where space disappears quickly and receivers have to win in traffic, off the wall and in compressed passing windows. The indoor game has long been a place where unusual athletes can turn traits into production and production into fresh opportunity. A receiver with Couch’s size becomes an obvious red-zone target, but he said that is not the only part of his game drawing attention.
“That was a big thing that came up when I went down in Miami,” Couch said. “I move better in tight spaces than people my size typically do. So that’s been the thing I took pride in. I’ve been pretty much just working on that all summer.”
That line ought to get the attention of Monsters coaches and quarterbacks alike. Big receivers are valuable. Big receivers who can move in confined space are a different problem altogether. In the indoor game, where possessions can feel like rapid-fire exchanges and the field shrinks every decision, those traits can become deadly.
For Couch, the opportunity in Duluth is not just about putting up touchdowns for a new franchise. It is also about producing the kind of film that keeps the phone alive.
“Yeah, waiting for somebody to send the paperwork over so I can get on the plane,” he said, when asked about the possibility of another call.
That is the life, right there. Not dreaming. Not campaigning. Waiting, preparing and trusting that somebody somewhere may still decide there is a place for him after all.
In the meantime, he sounds remarkably grounded for a man still chasing one of the hardest jobs in sports to secure.
“I’m a pretty zen person, so I don’t get too excited, too sad,” Couch said. “I just try to stay in the middle. I don’t show emotion. I could be thinking one thing, but it’ll never show. So basically I’m a person like, I’m not living too far ahead or looking too much in the rear view mirror. I take every day one step at a time.”
That answer may explain why Couch is still here, still relevant and still pushing. The players who survive the long professional middle class of football usually have something more than talent. They have emotional durability. They have the ability to absorb disappointment without letting it turn into identity.
Couch also has a life beyond football. He said he already holds a master’s degree in psychology and eventually hopes to work in player personnel. That, too, feels fitting. He is a player who has spent years being evaluated, discussed and projected. Someday he may be the one doing the evaluating.
For now, though, he remains a receiver with unfinished business.
He called the Monsters “very unique,” and his comments on the realities of pro football carried the same clear-eyed tone that runs through the rest of his story.
“I can be here today and go on the next day,” Couch said. “Nobody should get entitlement or feel like they should be anywhere. It’s a business.”
That is not cynicism. That is a professional talking.
And maybe that is the real scouting report on Mal Couch. Yes, he is long and explosive and physically unusual enough to make evaluators squint a little longer when they watch the film. Yes, he may still be that football unicorn, a player whose body and skill set do not line up as neatly as the league prefers.
But he is also something easier to trust than a label. He is mature. Self-aware. Still hungry. Still waiting. Still working.
The NFL has spent years trying to decide exactly what Couch is.
He seems to know. He is a wide receiver. He is a pro. And in Duluth, with training camp approaching and another season about to put fresh film into circulation, he may get another chance to make somebody else believe it, too.
