foundation for his core beliefs<\/a> of how to build a consistent winner in the NFL.<\/p>\nBut before any of that, he developed a love for football at an early age and an eye for certain intricacies of the game that come from being a coach\u2019s son.<\/p>\n
The early influence<\/p>\n
Jon-Eric Sullivan\u2019s parents split up when he was going into the second grade. He was born in Columbia, South Carolina in 1976 when his father was wide receivers coach of the South Carolina Gamecocks. Jerry Sullivan later spent a year at Indiana in 1983 and the next several seasons coaching receivers at LSU.<\/p>\n
For many years in his youth, when school was out, Jon-Eric Sullivan was spending the day with his dad and with the game of football.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would go in to work with him at 6 a.m., and my babysitter for the day was the football facility and everything that came with it,\u201d he told the South Florida Sun Sentinel in a sit-down interview this past week.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I\u2019d be sitting in coaches\u2019 meetings or I\u2019d be running around the stadium stealing the maintenance guy\u2019s golf cart, getting in trouble, and then I\u2019d go to practice. As I got older, I\u2019d go lift with the players.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the drive home on those days, he was drilling his father with football questions.<\/p>\n
Jerry Sullivan recalls his son being fascinated with getting to know players\u2019 backgrounds, where they came from, the skills they possessed that made them good at what they did.<\/p>\n
As a youngster, he could ride the LSU bus on a Saturday as the Tigers went from the team hotel to the stadium and get a feel for whether players were locked in and ready to play.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe watched the game from a little bit of a different perspective from a young kid,\u201d Jerry Sullivan said, in a phone interview with the Sun Sentinel.<\/p>\n
![\"Miami](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/tfl-z-dolphins1-77.jpg\")
Dolphins GM Jon-Eric Sullivan before a game vs. the Kansas City Chiefs on Sept. 27 in Miami Gardens. (AP Photo\/David Santiago)<\/p>\n
\u201cI couldn\u2019t tell you that, as an 8 year old, I was starting to take in locker room dynamics, but you start to see the common denominator for good teams,\u201d Jon-Eric Sullivan said. \u201cThe work ethic, the brotherhood, a lot of what we\u2019re going through right now in fighting through the hard times, adversity and sticking together and not pointing fingers and blaming.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jon-Eric Sullivan was soaking in the football knowledge, but in his early high school years at Catholic High in Baton Rouge, his grades were suffering. Jerry Sullivan enrolled his son at Fork Union Military Academy in Virginia before his junior year.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was one of the greatest moves I ever made in my life,\u201d Jerry Sullivan said. \u201cHe wasn\u2019t all for it, either. He had his bumps along the way. To me, that was the solution to help him. Be away from home, you grow up, having more responsibilities.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jon-Eric Sullivan adjusted to the new environment, and coach and athletic director Micky Sullivan \u2014 no relation \u2014 took an interest in him and became an inspiration to get him straightened out before college.<\/p>\n
Aside from military school, bouncing around from state to state presented its own challenge in the Dolphins GM\u2019s youth.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t love it at the time, but I will say, there\u2019s a lot that comes with it later in life as an adult,\u201d he said. \u201cYou learn how to adjust, you learn how to adapt, you learn how to meet new people and communicate, definitely breeds resiliency.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the son of a receivers coach, naturally that was the position he played, but at Fork Union, he played both sides of the ball and ended up leading the state with nine interceptions at cornerback on a state championship-winning team, as well as finding success as a returner.<\/p>\n
Jon-Eric Sullivan played at South Carolina first, where it all started for him in Columbia, bounced back and forth between wide receiver and cornerback with the Gamecocks, and then transferred to Division II Gardner-Webb. There, he found more playing time and was an all-conference selection.<\/p>\n
College was the end of Jon-Eric Sullivan\u2019s football playing days. His own evaluation of himself as a 5-foot-9 receiver: \u201cReject.\u201d But he adds the caveat that he played before the Wes Welker types had a home as an option out of the slot. Maybe he was just ahead of his time.<\/p>\n
The Miami connection<\/p>\n
Jon-Eric Sullivan never lived in Miami through all those years growing up, but he would still often come down to see his father\u2019s hometown and get to know his grandmother, who migrated to the United States from Sicily without speaking English.<\/p>\n
During those summers in Baton Rouge, he and his dad might take a week or two to stop in Orlando and work their way down to Miami. Jerry Sullivan showed his son the rough neighborhood he grew up in of Allapattah, attending Miami Jackson High.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember taking him in the car and showing him where I went to school,\u201d Jerry Sullivan said. \u201cHe said, \u2018Boy, this is a tough area.\u2019 I said, \u2018Yeah, it is.\u2019 He had a great sense of compassion for a young kid about his dad.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a blue-collar, tough area, but a lot of good football players came out of there. And I was blessed to be around some good coaches.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of those coaches was Joe Brodsky, who later was a two-time national champion as running backs coach with the Miami Hurricanes and then won three Super Bowls in the same role with the Dallas Cowboys. Jerry Sullivan was also high school teammates and, for a time, lived with the family of Joe Avezzano, who was special teams coach for those three Cowboys Super Bowls in the 1990s. He and Avezzano went on to Florida State together. At FSU, Jerry also played with Hall of Fame wide receiver Fred Biletnikoff.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a way out,\u201d Jerry Sullivan said of what football provided in Allapattah. \u201cThe area I grew up in, some guys went to school and went in the Army, some guys went to school and went to jail, some guys went on to play football, go to college.\u201d<\/p>\n
An eye for talent<\/p>\n
During those years that Jon-Eric Sullivan tagged along at LSU, he could spot the traits in players his dad coached, like Wendell Davis, who went on to be a first-round pick of the Chicago Bears. His father always emphasized footwork to his wide receivers, so he could pick up on the receivers that had it.<\/p>\n
\u201cFootball is a footwork game,\u201d Jerry Sullivan said.<\/p>\n
He has a long list of successful receivers he took under his wings at the pro level: Tony Martin in the mid 1990s with the San Diego Chargers; Herman Moore and Johnnie Morton in the late \u201990s with the Detroit Lions; David Boston and Anquan Boldin in the early 2000s with the Arizona Cardinals. Later on, he helped teach Brandon Lloyd and Michael Crabtree with the San Francisco 49ers, and Allen Robinson and Allen Hurns with the Jacksonville Jaguars.<\/p>\n
![\"Miami](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/tfl-l-jon-eric-sullivan-courtesy-02.jpg\")
Dolphins GM Jon-Eric Sullivan (right) and his father, longtime college football and NFL assistant coach Jerry Sullivan, during a Miami practice on Oct. 9 in Miami Gardens. (Tomas Diniz Santos\/Courtesy of Miami Dolphins)<\/p>\n
Within the last decade, he was back at LSU as an assistant, and he played a big role in finding and developing two of the best receivers in the NFL today, in Ja\u2019Marr Chase and Justin Jefferson. Chase was always considered an elite recruit, but Jerry Sullivan vouched for the lightly recruited Jefferson, as he was able to identify the way he could cut in and out of breaks with \u2014 what it all comes back to \u2014 his footwork.<\/p>\n
Jerry Sullivan was also wide receivers coach of the Dolphins in 2004, which was an infamous season for the franchise, sparked by Ricky Williams\u2019 first retirement that July, as he faced suspension for a failed drug test for marijuana. Coach Dave Wannstedt, who is also close with current coach Jeff Hafley, was fired in the middle of that season.<\/p>\n
Getting his foot in the door<\/p>\n
But another thing happened for the Sullivans that year far from Miami. Jon-Eric Sullivan started working full-time with the Packers.<\/p>\n
After college at Gardner-Webb, he tried to get into corporate America for a couple of years, but it wasn\u2019t for him. He had to get back to football. And he also realized, from coaching wide receivers as a student assistant in 2000, he wasn\u2019t patient enough to be a coach. Talent evaluation was the way for him.<\/p>\n
Jerry Sullivan made a call to a good friend in Packers vice president of football operations Mark Hatley, who died of a heart attack the following year after bringing Jon-Eric Sullivan into the building as an intern in 2003. He rose through the scouting ranks, kept following the trail of current Green Bay GM Brian Gutekunst<\/a> as Sullivan made his own rise and now has his own GM job with the Dolphins.<\/p>\n\u201cAs a dad, I kind of pointed him in the direction, and he took the ball and ran with it. That\u2019s the best way to describe it,\u201d Jerry Sullivan said. \u201cHe was exposed to it as a young kid, and I always put this emphasis on it when he was a kid: \u2018Don\u2019t ever think you have to play football because I\u2019m your dad and I coach.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted him to be his own man. I didn\u2019t want him to have to feel that, because I was a football coach, he had to fall in line with me, play football, but he loved it, he worked at it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Said Jon-Eric: \u201cI\u2019m not here without him. The lessons that I\u2019ve learned, the things that he allowed me to see \u2014 it wasn\u2019t easy.\u201d<\/p>\n
His father\u2019s sacrifice comes full circle to him now when he hosts him to watch the Dolphins practice.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe likes to come hang out \u2014 I say this with all love and respect \u2014 it\u2019s not super convenient. I got a job to do, and you got your dad here,\u201d Jon-Eric said. \u201cBut I\u2019m thinking back to when I was a kid. I\u2019m sure it wasn\u2019t convenient for him.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the end, it was all worth it for Jerry Sullivan.<\/p>\n
\u201cI couldn\u2019t be more proud of the man he is, as well as the (football executive),\u201d he said. \u201cThe man, the father \u2014 he\u2019s got three girls \u2014 he\u2019s a great dad, great husband and just a good person. When you\u2019ve got young kids, that\u2019s what you hope they become.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MIAMI GARDENS \u2014 Jerry Sullivan grew up in the foster care system in Miami, born 23 years before…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":430677,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[169120,58521,123,1763,125,124],"class_list":["post-430676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-jerry-sullivan","tag-jon-eric-sullivan","tag-miami","tag-miami-dolphins","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=430676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430676\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/430677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=430676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=430676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=430676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}