Ben Chukwuma played in 1st football game 2 years ago. Now he’s in the NFL

TAMPA — The question caught the Bucs tackle a little off guard. During a walk-through in the team’s indoor facility last week, offensive line coach Brian Picucci asked Ben Chukwuma if he had found an apartment in Tampa Bay.

“He said, ‘Ben, are you looking for an apartment?’ ” Chukwuma recalled. “I was like, ‘Nah.’ And he said, ‘Well, start looking at apartments.’

“That’s how I found out I had made the team.”

For Chukwuma to find a home in the NFL is the completion of one of the more improbable journeys in league history.

Chukwuma was a quiet kid who rarely spoke when he moved to Georgia from his native Nigeria at 17. He played soccer and basketball but knew absolutely nothing about American football when he was one of 40 players who walked on at Georgia State for an open tryout in 2020. We’re talking about a guy who had never buckled a chin strap or worn shoulder pads.

Head coach Shawn Elliott saw Chukwuma’s size and strength — at the time he was 6 feet 6 and 240 pounds — and decided right then that tryouts weren’t necessary for him.

Even so, Chukwuma’s first season was a washout because of the COVID-19 pandemic. He didn’t get onto the field until an injury allowed him to play the final game of the 2023 season. His performance was solid enough for him to move to left tackle for a bowl game and help Georgia State rush for 386 yards in a win over Utah State.

Flash forward and after only two years of playing in his first football games and one season as a starter, the Bucs paid Chukwuma a $55,000 signing bonus as an undrafted free agent and guaranteed him $245,000 in salary.

“Football made me come out of my shell and I was starting to learn new things,” Chukwuma said. “I didn’t really talk to anybody until I joined the football team and that’s it. I started to socialize differently over here; it just changed my life, so that’s when I started falling in love with the game.”

Kevin Carberry, the Bucs’ run game coordinator, said the great thing about Chukwuma is how coachable he has become. Even though each lesson about the intricacies of the game is new to him, he retains everything.

“He rarely makes the same mistake twice,” Carberry said. “Like we want all guys to do, he can take it from the meeting room to the practice field and make all the necessary adjustments and he’s been able to do that with something as simple as, ‘Hey, shorten your step here,’ or ‘Hey, get more square here.’ Or here’s an example of Tristan (Wirfs) doing it last year or Luke (Goedeke) doing it last year, and he does it.

“He’s more malleable. He’s a blank slate.”

Chukwuma said those early days at Georgia State were paramount to his development because the coaches gave him an opportunity and he didn’t want to let them down.

“I was like, ‘Okay. I have no experience.’ But I was able to start learning and then I realized that I’m starting to get good at this, you know?” Chukwuma said. “Other places, they didn’t believe in me. But Georgia State, they believed in me and gave me a shot. That’s when I started to love football because of the people around me. I didn’t want to disappoint them.

“It was the coaches, the way they were nice to me, the way they were speaking to me, they wanted me to develop.”

One semester, Chukwuma had to move home to take care of his father, who has Parkinson’s, when he needed back surgery. It forced him to miss spring practice. Normally, Elliott wouldn’t allow players back on the team, but he left it to a vote of his teammates and they all wanted Chukwuma back.

Now at 6-6, 311 pounds with outstanding feet and strength, Chukwuma has a vice grip that makes it hard for defensive linemen to shake free once he puts his hands on them.

“He’s very strong,” Carberry said. “He’s got heavy hands. Some guys are apprehensive about throwing their hands in pass protection, he’s not. He throws them and you can coach off those things.

“That’s another positive about Chuk. There’s still a lot we’ve got to clean up but he has heavy-handed, natural strength (and) he uses his length to his advantage. He’s eager. A great listener. His baseline was a little better than I expected but he learned it fast.”

In the final preseason game against the Bills, the Bucs moved Chukwuma from left to right tackle.

He handled Arkansas defensive end Landon Jackson, Buffalo’s third-round pick, with ease. He held his own against veteran A.J. Epenesa.

“He did well. We really like him,” Carberry said. “He did a lot of good things at left tackle, too. So, for him to go from left to right means his learning curve is coming along very well, and he did well over there as well. We’re excited to see what the future holds.”

Once Picucci broke the roster news, Chukwuma called his parents.

“The first person I called was my mom,” he said. “She started crying on the phone. I talked to my dad, and he was just giving the strength to keep going.

“I keep telling people that it still hasn’t hit me that I made it to the NFL. So, like, that moment was surreal when I found out. I couldn’t believe it. I was like, ‘Wow!’ ”

Up next

SEASON OPENER

at Falcons, 1 p.m. Sept. 7 TV/radio: Fox; 97.9-FM

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Ben Chukwuma played in 1st football game 2 years ago. Now he’s in the NFL

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