Sam Orji is not the first American football prospect from Lagos in the NFL International Player Pathway Program (IPPP), but it was his talent that paved the way for New York Giants great Osi Umenyiora to actively recruit in the city.
Orji’s training video was the first which Lagos-based independent coaching program Educational Basketball submitted to Umenyiora in 2021 to convince him that their players were worthy of attention.
Afterwards, Kenneth Odumegwu (Green Bay Packers), Jason Chukwuebuka Godrick (Kansas City Chiefs) and David Agoha (Las Vegas Raiders) were all allocated to NFL teams via the IPPP, having started at Educational Basketball.
Of the three Nigerian players in this year’s IPPP class, two are from Educational Basketball in Lagos, with the exception being Nigerian-Scottish Praise Olatoke.
Iseolupo Adepitan, who runs Educational Basketball with his brother, Olutobi, told ESPN: “Sam has been with Educational Basketball since 2019. When I first met him, I immediately knew he was a football player but obviously there were no opportunities at the time.
“The original plan we had with his mom was to get him a basketball scholarship and he already had interest from different colleges in the US.
“After two years of training, we came into contact with Osi Umenyiora and it was Sam’s training video that we sent to Osi in 2021 that got us into football training, scouting etc. There’s absolutely no football in Lagos without Sam Orji.”
Born in Abuja, Orji had moved to Lagos for secondary school and set his sights on a basketball career after hitting a growth spurt.
Orji told ESPN: “I wanted to be a soccer player. In Nigeria, the first thing we do is [association] football. I played soccer [as a] striker and I was thinking of making it big. I had my growth spurt, and I changed schools, so I started playing basketball [in] 2015.”
When the Adepitan brothers recorded video footage of him, he had no idea that it was going to be watched by a two-time Super Bowl winner.
Orji added: “I initially thought it was just for Educational Basketball’s page and for them to just put me out there more for [others] to see my work ethic.
“I went to university in Nigeria, so when I came back for a break, [the Adepitan brothers] told me: ‘We sent this to Osi and we think you’re a great fit for it. He just saw the video and said he needs more guys like this.'”
Orji took some convincing, but ultimately realised that he had a clearer pathway to success in American football than basketball. It helped that he knew the basics of football, having been taught by a cousin who had been studying in the US.
Having caught Umenyiora’s eye, Orji moved on to an Uprise camp in Abuja and then the inaugural NFL Africa Touchdown camp in Ghana, which took place in June 2022. However, he felt he was unable to showcase his full potential there, as his university studies took up much of the time that he could have invested into preparing. Odumegwu and fellow Nigerian CJ Okoye were the standout performers in Ghana.
Orji was playing catch-up last year, while many of his friends moved on to the IPPP and another – Emmanuel Okorafor – was scooped up by the Louisville Cardinals’ basketball team.
However, with his studies now complete, Orji was able to focus full-time on impressing Umenyiora at the August 2023 Uprise camp in Lagos and his progress ensured he finally received his opportunity.
“He didn’t speak specifically, but he just told me: ‘We’ve got something coming,'” Orji said of his conversation with Umenyiora at the most recent Uprise camp.
Of the day on which he finally learned what the plan was, Orji recalled: “James Cook (the head of the NFL IPPP) called us on a Zoom call. My coach was like: ‘We have a Zoom call with James.’ This was November 2.
“I was in my house. We had a Zoom call and they just told us that they’d been scouting and they wanted to be the first to tell us that we had been selected for the IPP, so we were really happy about it.
“First of all, November 2 is my dad’s birthday. He’s passed away, but that would have been a milestone day. The announcement was January 18, which was the day of my dad’s memorial, so everything was just clicking. I just knew: ‘Ok, my dad is really watching me from heaven.’
“I won’t lie. That day (November 2), I cried. My hard work really paid off in this period.”
Orji has now begun a new life in Florida, where he is in the IPPP class alongside the likes of Educational Basketball product Isaac Ajanah and fellow Nigerian Olatoke, as well as Welsh rugby star Louis Rees-Zammit, the headline name among the 11 prospects this year.
However, while Rees-Zammit’s conversion to American football has generated the most attention so far, Orji, who is training to enter the league as a guard, is determined that one day, his own name will be up in lights.
“To make it to the IPP is one thing, making it to the NFL is one thing,” he said. “But to be an asset in the NFL is a whole different level. That’s what I’m trying to reach now.”
Source : ESPN
