By: Joshua Outland
"It hasn't set in. I don't even know. I'm grateful...You know when you really want something and you get it and you're like, 'Oh my goodness. Like, what?'" A jubilant and triumphant Efe Obada continued, "I'm so happy. I'm going to enjoy this. I've been working very hard just to feel this."
With those words uttered, Efe Obada had just achieved the impossible, living a modern-day, real-life Rocky Balboa story, pulling himself up using the ropes to beat the count-out and win his first World Heavyweight Championship Title. Like Rocky, Efe Obada went from a million-in-one shot, to proving he is one in a million, playing his way onto the Carolina Panthers final roster and becoming the first, and thus far only player from the International Player Pathway program to make it onto a 53-man roster.
His odyssey to the Carolina Panthers begins in Nigeria. At the tender age of just 10, Obada and his sister, 11, were trafficked to London England by a friend of his mother's in 2002. Once he got to London, he and his sister were quickly abandoned. Obada's first week in England was a homeless one, and he found himself sleeping just inside the entrance of a tower block, freezing and clinging to life with only his sister for comfort.
"This lady just left us out on the streets, " Obada told NFL UK. "It was scary and we were lonely."
Obada went to a building, told a security guard what happened, and the guard let Obada and his sister sleep in the foyer. After that, the security guard helped Obada get in touch with his mother and Amsterdam and she arranged for the kids to stay with a family in Stockwell. Unfortunately their mother would never come to claim her kids.
"We were then hoping that my mum would come to London and take control, but she never did," Obada told NFL UK. "We lived with this lady for about five years. The house was chaotic - they lady had five other children living there...and then me and my sister." Obada continued to recall the years of negligence and abuse he and his sister were forced into as a result of the situation they found themselves in. "It was a stressful environment and her children took precedence over us and we were like domestic slaves. We spent a lot of our time cleaning - it was not a good situation to be in."
At age 15, Efe Obada and his sister entered social services and started, as he put it: "home-hopping and living with strangers." The siblings were bounced back and forth among several different foster homes, many whom had no empathy for the children they were supposed to care for.
Looking For Family:
Gang Membership to London Warrior
As goes with most teens from broken homes, unfortunately, London gangs were the next step for Obada. He described himself as "angry," "negative," and "pessimistic," without any self-belief or family stability whatsoever.
"When you haven't got stability, you don't trust people - you know where you're living is not permanent and it's not real and you feel they're just getting paid to look after you. You develop trust issues and you develop your own little demons. It's not a nice feeling to not be wanted and to not have that security and stability."
"It made me angry. I developed a lot of anger. It made me a negative and pessimistic person. I didn't really believe in myself and because I never had that family stability, it led me to turn to friends in the area and that led me into gangs and running with the wrong people."
It wasn't until he witnessed the murder of three of his friends that he made the life-changing decision to get out of gangs. "My life could have gone bad or good, and I decided I wasn't going down that road," Obada stressed. "I lost a lot of friends and I saw people coming and going and I decided that was not the life for me or my sister. I decided to fix myself up, I found American football, found the London Warriors and they helped me to focus and turn my life around."
Obada admits that, "it would be very easy to go back to this life." However, despite the temptation, he never fell back into gang initiation again and focused on changing his future in spite of his broken past.
The London Warriors were the reason he made it off the streets. They have a program which focuses on getting youths off the streets and into the sport of gridiron, or American Football. At 22 years old, he made his first appearance for the team in 2014, and described his first experience playing football as, "I didn't really know anything about American football but I was told I had the physique and that I should try it. I fell in love with the sport. When I went to the first practice, I was just trying to get my frustration out and release some energy. I was congratulated for hitting somebody and I liked it."
"I'm a very competitive person and when I went into the Warriors I attacked it 100 percent because I saw where it could take me. I knew I was going to give it everything, it just felt right. In those moments when I was on the field, I felt at peace and I was happy. I wasn't thinking about my life- I was just in the moment and I enjoyed that. I only played five games, but I recorded a lot of sacks!"
He went on to play five games for the Warriors in 2014, and recorded "a lot" of sacks. He even got the chance to meet the Dallas Cowboys coaching staff in November 2014 when they were in London for the game against the Jacksonville Jaguars. Warriors defensive coordinator, Aden Durde, and former intern with the Cowboys recommended Obada to the team. That meeting would prove to be fateful, ultimately becoming his calling card from London to the National Football League.
While playing with the Warriors, Obada was also getting up for 6am shifts every morning to work 40 hours per week in a warehouse. Despite the long and strenuous shifts, he held fast to his dream and earned the respect of his coaches and teammates on the London Warriors.
From London Warrior to Carolina Panther
By April 2015, the Cowboys signed Obada to a three-year contract, making a drastic jump in pay from minimum wage, £6.50 per hour (approximately $7.28 USD in 2015), to the veteran minimum, $435,000 in his rookie year. However, he didn't stick right away. Like everything else in his life, he had to fight though adversity and hardship. By early 2016, Dallas waived Efe Obada, he then had short stints with both the Kansas City Chiefs and the Atlanta Falcons, but didn't get the chance to play a regular game with any of the aforementioned teams. His NFL dream looked bleak. Then, just like Rocky Balboa, getting the Heavyweight bout against Apollo Creed due to the injury of Mac Lee Green, Obada caught a break.
In 2017, the NFL started the International Player Pathway program, allowing the four teams in the NFC South an extra practice squad spot for a player from Europe. The Carolina Panthers, needing help at defensive end, used that spot on Obada. After spending 2017 as an extra man on the practice squad, Efe Obada came back to the Panthers in 2018 with the goal for earning his team's confidence and playing his way into a spot on the final roster.
“He had to become a different type of student of the game because of the lack of background in football,” defensive coordinator Eric Washington told Panthers.com. “He’s been a sponge. He’s always asking for extra stuff, whether in the classroom or out here at practice.”
In the end, Obada had a sack in the Panthers’ second preseason game against the Miami Dolphins, and through his determination and willingness to learn, he showed the coaches he was worthy of a spot on the Panthers final roster. He earned the spot even ahead of former 2017 third round pick, Daeshon Hall, who was waived in the final roster cutdown to 53 due to the team believing he needed more development. According to Bill Voth of Panthers.com, the team believes that Obada is far enough along in his development as a player where he can help out in the immediate future after spending a year on the practice squad. In addition to every other obstacle he overcame, Obada is the first player from the International Player Pathway program to make it on a 53-man roster.
"Walking in and getting released is what I'm used to," Obada told www.panthers.com. "I was walking in and making eye contact with everyone. No one spoke to me; I didn't say anything to anybody. I made it to my locker and they still hadn't stopped me or said anything.”
"Coach Rivera eventually came over to me and I was like, 'Is it real?'"
Indeed it was. Ron Rivera congratulated Efe Obada and officially welcomed him to the Carolina Panthers final roster. Going forward, no one knows what the future holds for Efe Obada. The Panthers are a little long in the tooth at Defensive End, and ageless wonder Julius “The Carolina Reaper” Peppers, while a stud even in his late 30s can’t play much longer. Obada could very well find his name called up to replace the hall of famer who is now fourth all time in sacks at 154 ½ and finds himself needing just a very possible 5 ½ more to move up to third all-time over Kevin Greene, ironically also a former Panther. In that very same breath, he could also be waived in a last minute roster move to address another position of need.
“It hasn’t set in. I don’t even know. I’m grateful,” Obada said, struggling to find the words to express his pure joy. “You know when you really want something and you get it and you’re like, ‘Oh my goodness. Like, what?’"
“I’m so happy. I’m going to enjoy this. I’ve been working very hard just to feel this. I’ve lost a lot to get here. I’ve had to sacrifice a lot. I’ve been through a lot,” Obada said. “All the suffering paid off. I want to make those people who believed in me proud. Everyone in the international program, everybody that has helped me and created a platform for people like me to be here – this has changed my life. But I know that this is just the beginning.”
Obada explains, “Coach E (defensive coordinator Eric Washington) told me it’s going to be harder to hold onto it than it was to obtain it. And I know how hard I worked to obtain it. If anything happens, I know that because of the training here and the environment I’ve been in, I can go anywhere and survive. This has instilled the belief in myself that I needed.”
Regardless of what happens tomorrow, today Efe Obada has cause and reason to breathe a sweet sigh of relief and relish in the sweetest victory. Just like Rocky, Efe Obada, is the underdog, the longshot, the million-in-one shot, who proved he was indeed a million-in-one, and in spite of debilitating hardships in his past, Kept Pounding his way onto the Carolina Panthers final 53 man roster.
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