Meet Bucs OL Ben Chukwuma, NFL-bound two years after his first football game

TAMPA, Fla. — In February 2020, the football program at Georgia State held an open tryout for potential walk-ons, and about 40 students showed up to run through drills. But only one made an assistant hurry into head coach Shawn Elliott’s office.

“He said, ‘I don’t know if this guy can play, but he’s massive,'” Elliott recalled. “I said, ‘Where is he?’ and he pointed him out on the field. I said, ‘Tell that dude he doesn’t have to go through tryouts. We’re going to take him, regardless. He’s got a roster spot.'”

That was the first step for Ben Chukwuma, who moved to Georgia from his native Nigeria when he was 17, loving soccer and basketball but knowing nothing at all about American football. The past five years have been a slow but persistent journey, but the result, amazingly, is the same: He has a roster spot in the NFL.

After the NFL Draft concluded on Saturday, Chukwuma got a call from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and impossible as it seems, the undrafted free agent who got the most guaranteed money from any NFL team this year — $300,000 — had never played in a football game at any level until two years ago.

“My potentiality is what makes the NFL teams excited,” he said Sunday. “They see with my little experience what am I able to do.”

At that Georgia State workout, Elliott made a point to introduce himself to Chukwuma, who was towering at 6-foot-6 and weighed about 240 pounds then. He had listed himself as a defensive end at a friend’s suggestion, but Elliott, a longtime offensive line coach, knew his future was there.

“Very lean, athletic-looking, strong. I could tell this was going to be a whole new ballgame for him,” Elliott said. “I told him he looked like an NFL tackle right now, and we were going to teach him everything we could, help develop him and see if we could get him to the NFL.”

While most NFL rookies have played close to 100 football games between high school and college, Chukwuma has only played in 23, total. He has a profile on LinkedIn, touting his degree in computer information systems and cybersecurity, and this time last year, he was interning with the Fulton County government, working on cyberattack response plans. So he’s equal parts IT and OT, an absolute firewall of an NFL prospect.

“He’s just a big piece of clay that you can make however you want,” said former NFL coach Hue Jackson, now Georgia State’s offensive coordinator. “Somebody can really pour the right things into him. His growth over the next several months — he’ll be around NFL guys and they’ll take him under their wings and let him be what he can be. He’s athletic, he’s long, he’s tough and he loves football, and he’s going to work hard at it.”

Chukwuma had the size and athleticism to play football, but had to learn the sport from a fundamental level. This wasn’t about stance or hand placement, but how big the field is, how many players are on the field at a time, literally everything.

“People will use the term a lot that he’s raw. Ben was so raw, it was incredible,” Elliott said. “I would try to communicate with him about defensive fronts and techniques, he would look at you and just say that he didn’t know what you were talking about. If you had given him a basic test on football, how big the field was, where do you kick off from, what’s an extra point, he would have smiled and said, ‘I have no idea.’ It was from the ground up as far as teaching him the game.”

So before they got to footwork, blocking assignments, how to avoid penalties, it was just basic mission statements. Elliott remembers a blocking drill when he just told him: “Do me a favor: Don’t let this guy move.” Chukwuma’s default expression in practice was a very serious look, but teammates knew they were in trouble when he suddenly cracked a huge smile, because it was in recognition of picking up a new skill like a kickstep or another piece of technique.

His path from walk-on to even getting on the playing field at Georgia State wasn’t easy. His first season’s progress was essentially derailed by COVID, and even as he learned the sport and grew — 280 pounds by his third season — he hadn’t played a snap. The biggest thing he’d done was win the team’s hot-dog eating contest — with nine — in the summer of 2022.

At one point, his father, who has Parkinson’s, needed back surgery, and since Ben was his primary caretaker, he had to move home to take care of him, going to Elliott one spring and telling him he’d have to leave the team. About a month later, his father was healthy enough that Chukwuma could return, though Elliott typically did not allow players back after they left. He asked the leaders on his team, and they agreed they wanted him back, so he was.

Chukwuma got into his first college games in 2023, but he didn’t get to start until an injury pressed him into duty in the final game of the regular season. He played well enough that Georgia State moved him to left tackle for its bowl game, and the team rushed for 386 yards in a 45-32 win over Utah State in Boise, Idaho. Elliott resigned and took a job as an assistant at South Carolina, but under new coach Dell McGee, Chukwuma, now 310 pounds, started 11 games this past season.

“He’s new to football, but you definitely see the size, the length, the quickness, and the upside that he’s going to potentially show in the NFL in due time,” said McGee, who came to Georgia State from the University of Georgia, where he coached with current Bucs receivers coach Bryan McClendon and knew Todd Bowles because his son, Todd, was a Bulldogs safety. “Tampa Bay did a good job of doing their research on Ben and evaluating him. You’re going to get someone who’s going to work hard and be an outstanding pillar in the community. His ceiling in regard to offensive tackle is very high.”

Chukwuma’s username on Twitter is “odogwu,” a word in the Igbo language of his native Nigeria that translates to “strong man” or “warrior.” He helped himself in the draft process with a strong game last October against Marshall, where edge rusher Mike Green led the nation with 17 sacks and ended up a second-round pick of the Ravens on Friday. Green had sacks in all but three games last season, but one of them came against Georgia State and Chukwuma, who stepped up to meet a big challenge.

“When the game started, my main goal was to try to be more physical than him,” Chukwuma said. “I tried to be so physical that it disrupted his game and got in his head. Once I had that game, I just tried to build from that.”

Tampa Bay sent scout Tony Hardie to Georgia State’s pro day, and Chukwuma participated in the Falcons’ local pro day, so other teams also had their eyes on him. The Bucs went out of their way to make sure they got him. He received a $55,000 signing bonus — late seventh-round picks get around $80,000 — and they took the extra step of guaranteeing him $245,000 in salary, which in the least amounts to close to a full season on the practice squad.

“I knew this guy had the talent. He just needs the years of experience,” Elliott said. “He’s just going to continue to grow and get better, and it’s great to see him now playing at such a high level and seeing him enjoying the game like I knew he would. He’s still so new to this game that the sky’s the limit.”

Greg Auman is an NFL Reporter for FOX Sports. He previously spent a decade covering the Buccaneers for the Tampa Bay Times and The Athletic. You can follow him on Twitter at @gregauman.

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