His National Football League playing days in the books, Justin Bethel is far removed from his role on Blythewood High School’s inaugural year state championship football team.
Bethel spent 12 years in the league as a cornerback and as a specialist in covering punts, kickoffs, and field goal and extra-point attempts. Drafted by Arizona in the sixth round as the 177th pick in the 2012 NFL Draft, he spent six years with the Cardinals where he won All-Pro First Team honors in 2013 and 2015 and was a three-time Pro Bowl selection from 2013 to 2015. He played for the Atlanta Falcons, Baltimore Ravens, New England Patriots, and the Miami Dolphins before officially retiring in 2025.
But the husband and father of two who lives with his young family outside Phoenix, Arizona, hasn’t forgotten how that state championship win shaped his last 20 years.
“That year definitely catapulted me through everything,” Bethel said Monday afternoon. “If we don’t win that championship, I don’t know that Coach (Jeff) Scott leaves to get the Presbyterian job, and if not, I wouldn’t have gone there to play football. I wouldn’t have stayed there for four years playing football and wouldn’t have been in the NFL.”
Bethel had a good feeling just before the inaugural season.
“We had a really good team going into the season and we had really high hopes,” he said.
Those high hopes fell back down to earth in the season opener, a 21-13 loss to Ridge View. Bethel said Coach Scott talked to the team after the loss. He said that Blythewood was still a good team, and that they should use this loss as fuel.
“After that we took one game at a time, one game at a time,” Bethel said. “One thing about Coach Scott was that he was always super relatable to the team, to the players. He looked out for us. So everybody bought in to what he was saying, one game at a time.”
The Bengals notched the first win in program history one week later, a 35-13 victory at Lamar. The next week? A 21-19 win over Richland Northeast, the first home win in team history. The next week? A 24-19 win at Fairfield Central.
By Week 5, the Blythewood offense was high-performing. A 51-13 win over Dreher, followed by a 56-19 win over Camden.
By those games, Bethel said, “We were like, OK wait a minute, we’re getting on a roll and we’re blowing teams out. We played like crazy all the way to the end of the year.”
Blythewood finished the regular season posting wins over Chester, A.C. Flora, Lugoff-Elgin, and Eau Claire.
With a 9-1 record, the Bengals opened the playoffs with an 84-41 win over Blue Ridge—a game that still stands out as the most points the team has ever scored in a game. Quarterback Richard Mounce passed for 549 yards and threw a school-record nine touchdown passes—eight of which landed in the soft hands of Marquan Jones. Jones had 17 catches for 376 yards and eight scores.
The Bengals next beat Lugoff-Elgin 17-7 in the second round. A 42-10 victory over Greer in the third round vaulted the team to the upper-state championship game against Clinton.
“They were a big strong team wanting to come into our house and take us off our high horse,” Bethel said.
Clinton got off to a 14-10 lead at the half, but Blythewood led 24-21 going into the fourth quarter. A Red Devils field goal tied the game at 24-24 and the teams went into overtime.
Blythewood scored first with a Mounce dive into the end zone for the go-ahead score. Placekicker Aaron Mayes knocked in the extra point for a 31-24 lead.
Clinton responded with a touchdown on its own but instead of lining up for a PAT, the Red Devils tried to go for two points and the win.
Bethel and the Bengals defense stopped them short and punched their ticket for Williams-Brice.
“There were a lot of key plays in the game to make things happen, but it came down to one crazy play,” Bethel remembered. “They scored, but then we stopped them right at the line and we all started going crazy.”
Bethel had 12 tackles and three assists in that game. Mounce passed 22 of 31 times for 288 yards and a touchdown, and rushed for another score. Charles Wright had four catches for 129 yards.
Against the Wolves, Blythewood fell behind 7-0 but led 10-7 by halftime and 17-15 going into the fourth quarter. Mayes kicked his second field goal of the game, yet Timberland held a 21-20 lead in the closing seconds—but the Bengals had the football.
With two seconds left, Mayes lined up for the game-winning kick. He drilled it through the uprights. The Bengals stormed the field and carried the him.
“It was just our fashion for us to finish it off with our kicker in the last seconds,” Bethel said. “As high-school kids we were on top of the world. We had great players, a great team, a great coach. It was something special. I don’t think any one of us will forget it.”
The aftermath was, at first glance, a little anticlimactic. Scott left Blythewood to be a wide receivers coach at Presbyterian College. A lot of seniors graduated, but enough top talent, including Bethel and Mounce, would go on to play their senior years and lead the team to an undefeated season.
Unfortunately, the Bengals, under first-year head coach Jeremy Saitz, were cited for an illegal practice in the summer of 2007 and were banned from the postseason. Bethel said in many ways the 2007 team was better but was not able to put their effort to the test in the postseason.
“In my senior year I became a full-time starter and a good player, but I never thought I was coming out of high school as a football player,” he said.
Bethel wanted to go to college and was thinking about culinary arts, either at Johnson and Wales University in Charleston or at the University of South Carolina. Considering he had no idea how to pay for it, he thought that if he would go to USC he could try his luck as a walk-on.
Scott returned to Bethel’s world in his senior year at Blythewood, not as a coach but as a sort of scout.
“He told me, ‘I’m at PC, and you’re a great player,’” Bethel recalled. “’Come and start as a freshman, and you’ll get a full ride.’”
It was the only football offer Bethel ever received. By the end of his time at Presbyterian, Bethel made the Blue Hose thankful that Scott rediscovered a former player.
Bethel made a difference on the field early on as a freshman, but after his sophomore year his coaches took notice.
“They told me if you keep playing, you have a chance of taking it to the next level,” he said. “That was the first time it occurred to me that I could play in the NFL. I’ve always had a good work ethic, I love competing, I love practicing. I can’t not go hard at everything.”
His full record as a Blue Hose backs that up.
At PC Bethel earned three All-Big South Conference Second Team honors and was PC’s first Defensive Player of the Year as a senior in 2011. He made 279 tackles for the Blue Hose, 14 for loss, 2.5 sacks, four forced fumbles, and 16 pass breakups.
He still holds the Big South record for blocked kicks with nine and blocked punt returns for touchdowns with two.
In 2024 he was named the first PC athlete to be inducted into the Big South Hall of Fame.
Bethel graduated early with a degree in business administration, but indeed the NFL took notice of his results. NFL scouts from all 32 teams managed to get a look at him in the run-up to the 2012 NFL Draft.
“After the season was over, it was really looking like a possibility,” Bethel said of going pro. “I said let’s make this happen. So I found an agent.”
Bethel was realistic. PC is a small school, and there were hundreds of athletes from dozens of schools jockeying to be taken in the draft. He felt that he would likely go undrafted but be able to sign with a team as a free agent.
Then, as the draft picks piled up and round after round passed, Bethel got the call from the Arizona Cardinals—in the sixth round as the 177th pick.
“I was sitting on my couch when I heard it,” he said. “I’m not geographically inclined. I didn’t even know where Arizona was on a map. Going out there was definitely a shock, with the heat and the scenery and the cactus, everything looks dry. Definitely different from South Carolina.”
Bethel figured that Presbyterian’s game at Cal-Berkeley in his senior year—the first time he flew on a plane—was what did it for the Cardinals. The Blue Hose lost 63-12 but he said scouts probably took note that he scored all 12 of the team’s points: in the second quarter he blocked a Cal punt and returned it 15 yards for a touchdown. Four minutes later he intercepted a pass from Cal quarterback Zach Maynard and returned it 29 yards for another score.
“That was a game that showed scouts that I could play at a higher level and higher competition,” he said.
It took a little while for Bethel to adjust to the new environment and a higher level of training, preparation, and execution, and he admits that at that time he was more of an athlete than he was a student of the game. It took him time to learn the plays and dive into them at practice. He struggled during training camp.
“I was feeling it, but I was thinking I don’t know if I’m able to do this,” he said. “I couldn’t learn the plays in the playbook and it was kicking my butt. But once preseason started one thing I had always been good at was special teams—blocking kicks.”
Bethel leaned on his strength over the preseason. In the Hall of Fame Game that year in Canton, Ohio, he blocked a field goal in Arizona’s 17-10 loss to the New Orleans Saints. He had other highlights as a special teams artist in the preseason, enough for the Cardinals to decide to keep him on the roster.
“This is my bread and butter,” he said. “Early on I started on special teams.”
Bethel found out quickly that he had to keep trying to make the team throughout the season. A teammate reminded him that it was a job and he had to keep earning it.
Suffice to say, he learned how to keep earning it through six years with the team, three All-Pro selections, and three Pro Bowls.
He stayed with the Cardinals, excelling at special teams play, for six years. He also played with the Atlanta Falcons, Baltimore Ravens, New England Patriots, and Miami Dolphins. He retired from the NFL in 2025 with 282 tackles, 5 forced fumbles, 8 fumble recoveries, 25 pass deflections, 5 interceptions and 3 defensive touchdowns over a 12-year career.
During and since his football career, Bethel had the good fortune to start and run the Beating All Odds Foundation, which helps stabilize people and organizations so they can be positive influences in their communities. Among the programs in his foundation is the Beating All Odds Football Camp, a 7-on-7 camp held at Blythewood every June since 2015.
“My whole career was a blessing,” Bethel said. “I stayed healthy and I left the game on my own. Special teams were my favorite but it was fun all the way through the 2024 season. I played 12 years, I’m healthy and now I’m just in dad mode, working on different entrepreneurial stuff with my family. I have my hands on different things.”
As for that life-changing season in 2006, Bethel and the rest of his teammates will long remember the year of the title. For Bethel, it was also a year that was instrumental in lifting him into one of the top special teams players in the NFL.
“For me, it started everything,” Bethel said. “Once you go through that work in practice and see what you did—I only lost one game in high school—it definitely made football fun.”
