Germany’s new football hope Brandon Coleman has had an unusual path

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Brandon Coleman in the NFL: Basketball was his “first love”

The son of a German mother and an American GI, born in Virginia and raised in Berlin, he originally had his sights set on the NBA: basketball was his “first love”. “I travelled a lot in Europe and played tournaments, winning a few. Then in 2015 I went to the USA with the dream of playing in the NBA.”

He doesn’t get any basketball offers from high schools, but when he visits a school, the athletic director, seeing his strong physique, asks him if he has ever tried football: “I’ve always been interested in football because my father always wanted to play it and that’s just the way it happened.”

Switching to pigskin is a complete success for Coleman. He arrived at TCU, Texas Christian University, in 2020 via Trinity Valley Community College. Not exactly Alabama or Michigan, but still a college football powerhouse with annual playoff ambitions. There, the football late bloomer blossomed as a starter in the offensive line, as a right tackle in the first year and as a left guard the next three years and, above all, as a left tackle, that is, the most important defender of the quarterback, who literally has his back against right-handed hitters to remain free.

The tough everyday life of German players in the European football league

Coleman impresses with his tremendous athleticism, surely trained by years of playing basketball. That’s how he attracts the attention of NFL scouts: he still has some work to do when it comes to technique, but that can be made up for through good coaching rather than physical shortcomings. That’s not the case: at the Pro Day before the draft, in which talents are put through their paces, the 1.94 meter tall athlete ran 40 yards in less than 5 seconds despite his 142 kilos: “I used to run fast, jump high and some people didn’t know that.”

In various speed and agility tests, Coleman is among the absolute elite: In the “Relative Athletic Score,” evaluating all talent on a scale of 1-10, he gets a 9.96 score. Only six guards have been better since 1987. But because his performance in pass protection will decline somewhat in his final season in 2023, partly due to injuries, it’s not entirely clear where he’ll land in the draft. From Rounds 2 to 5, anything seems possible.