Akheem Mesidor's long, long road to the NFL

CORAL GABLES, Fla. -- Akheem Mesidor once walked more than 2 miles in a snowstorm to get to football training in his Canadian hometown, hoping each step would lead him to just one scholarship offer.

Nearly a decade later, his scholarship secure, Mesidor found himself standing on the edge of an Olympic-sized pool on the University of Miami campus, jumping headlong into his quest to reach the NFL.

Say one thing for Mesidor: He will put in the miles.

On those weekend mornings last summer, Mesidor geared himself up for some of his most challenging work to date: swimming 1 mile, or 60 laps, so he could lose enough weight, build enough stamina and transform his body to play defensive end for his final season with the Hurricanes. Mesidor swam freestyle one lap after another, and sometimes the older swimmers in the pool with him would offer advice on his form, cheering him on as he got better and better.

Soon, Mesidor got other linemen to join him in the pool, but with mixed results. Rueben Bain Jr. tried it once, lasted 10 laps, and quit. Others, like Herbert Scroggins III and Cole McConathy II came regularly. Defensive line coach Jason Taylor never got in the pool, but he often saw Mesidor after workouts. Taylor was amazed.

"He told me one day he was doing it, and I thought he was nuts," Taylor said with a laugh.

Mesidor lost 20 pounds to get down to 265 and went into fall camp in the best shape of his life. Earlier injuries that slowed him down were in the past. He was back at his favored position, defensive end, after playing on the interior of the line the year before, and he had Bain on the opposite side of the line to form a formidable rush duo.

"He told me, 'I can't go back to Canada. This is all I've got, so it has to work for me,'" Taylor said.

Mesidor had a career year, leading Miami with 17.5 tackles for loss and 12.5 sacks in his final season -- improving his NFL draft stock from a possible sixth- or seventh-rounder last year, to a potential first-round pick next week. Critics may consider his age, at 25, to be a concern. Mesidor can't help but shrug. If only the world understood what it took for him to reach this point.

MESIDOR CALLS HIS journey to this point "untraditional," and that starts with the sport his mom signed him up to play when he was 8 years old in Ottawa, Ontario, where he was born and raised. Carole Richard believed her son needed an outlet for his pent-up energy. Hockey may be the national pastime in Canada, but she settled on football, believing the sport would serve him best.

He started on the offensive line, but he immediately hated it.

"He would say, 'I don't want to be here. I don't like it, take me home,'" Richard said. "I told the coach, 'I think you need to try him on defense.' Once they did that, oh my God, this child took off."

Mesidor would sleep in his shoulder pads and uniform the nights before games. His team was not competitive, but he was a standout -- enough that he caught the eye of an opposing coach who ran his own football training program, Gridiron Academy, in a neighboring community. Victor Tedondo noticed that no matter how badly Mesidor's team was losing, the player always made tackles.

Tedondo approached the 9-year-old Mesidor and told him he wanted to train him.

"The goal of my program is to help athletes go to the next level," Tedondo told him. "I think you can be one of those guys."

Richard could not afford to send him to the academy. Money was tight at home -- she raised Mesidor and her four children as a single mother. Tedondo offered a discounted rate, and Richard took on a third job after Mesidor begged for a chance to go.

"I had to give him a chance to make it," Richard said.

Still, times were hard for the entire family.

"I gave them whatever I could afford," Richard said. "We were poor. Sometimes the lights got cut out, and I didn't know where the next meal was coming from, but we always ended up managing. Sometimes I would have a neighbor out of the blue give me $20, and I have no clue why. I just believe in God. Looking back, I don't know how I did it."

When Mesidor got into middle and high school, Tedondo would pile up the van with the players he coached who had college potential, and drive the groups across the border to camps.

Mesidor did not get much attention, but others in the group did. At a Michigan camp in 2017, going into his sophomore year, another player from Gridiron Academy received a scholarship offer.

On the ride back to Canada, Mesidor was visibly upset, so Tedondo spoke up. "We know who the best player is in this car," he said, looking at Mesidor. "Akheem, you need to get your stuff together."

If that was meant to light a fire under Mesidor, it did the opposite. Mesidor knew he was not progressing as quickly as the others. Things were challenging at home, and he needed a break.

So, he quit football and took a job at Domino's Pizza to make some money. After chewing him out, Tedondo didn't hear from Mesidor for several weeks. Tedondo panicked about what had happened. He finally reached the mother of one of Mesidor's closest friends. Mesidor happened to be at her home at the time, so she put him on the phone. Tedondo asked, "Akheem, if you are not going to pursue football, what do you want to do?"

"I didn't have an answer," Mesidor said.

They spoke for 30 minutes, and agreed football was still the best way for him to get his education. Mesidor came back to Gridiron Academy with renewed determination. He was the first one at workouts and the last to leave. He pushed harder, did everything better. But there were still tough moments for him to overcome. Tedondo recalls Mesidor arriving one snowy day having walked 2½ miles from his home because he did not have a ride or enough money to take the bus.

"What really broke my heart is he told me that he had not eaten, and there was no heat at home," Tedondo said. "They were warming the house with candles. I remember telling Akheem, 'You don't have to have a poor man's dream. Dream big.'"

That is what he did. His improvement showed over the next year, and he got his first offer, from Syracuse.

At one camp, the Best of the Midwest Combine, Tedondo said Mesidor -- a three-star prospect at the time -- won MVP among linemen, routinely beating four- and five-stars. At the Under Armour Camp in Columbus, it was more of the same. So, Mesidor headed to Clearwater Academy International in Florida for his senior year of high school to gain even more exposure.

Mesidor was 1,500 miles away from home. He was living with a host family. But that didn't impact him on the football field. In that one season playing high school ball in the United States, Mesidor had 92 tackles, 18 tackles for loss, 10 sacks, four forced fumbles and two fumble recoveries. Ultimately, he had more than 20 offers after struggling to land one two years earlier.

He chose West Virginia.

"There were a lot of obstacles, and it was a very untraditional route," Mesidor said. "Coming from a different country, there's a lot of bumps along the road. But at the end of the day, if you love football, you do whatever it takes."

IN HIS FIRST year, Mesidor emerged as an All-American at defensive end in the COVID-disrupted 2020 season, but in 2021 he was asked to move to the interior of the defensive line. He made the switch and was an All-Big 12 honorable mention, playing through a shoulder injury that required offseason surgery. Mesidor was eager to return to defensive end, but the coaching staff wanted him to stay inside. Unsatisfied, he entered the transfer portal and chose Miami.

What happened next was not in the plan. Mesidor played through a torn ligament in his foot in 2022, but still led the team with 10.5 tackles for loss and had seven sacks. The following season, he tore a ligament in his other foot in the opener, tried to play through it in Week 2 against Texas A&M and ultimately needed surgery on both feet, missing the rest of the year.

"One of the hardest moments of my life," he said.

"He was very depressed," Richard said. "He told me, 'Mom, you don't understand. I'm meant to play football. I'm not meant to be on the sidelines.'"

Mesidor stayed involved with the team as much as he could, but he says it was hard to see past the pain and desperation he felt.

"Everything was clouded," Mesidor said. "But I always knew what I was capable of doing, and I would talk to my girlfriend and tell her, 'Everybody's sleeping on me. I'm going to show the world.'"

Whatever it takes, right? Mesidor came back healthy for 2024 but the coaching staff asked him to move inside again. Desperate to be back on the field, he did as he was asked and became an All-ACC honorable mention, with nine tackles for loss and 5.5 sacks. He could have left for the draft as a fifth-year senior, but opted to return after draft feedback pegged him as a Day 3 selection.

But he had a request.

Mesidor started his swim workouts after a conversation with Taylor and coach Mario Cristobal once the season ended. He wanted to move back to defensive end for his final year, and asked, "What do I need to do to get back there?"

Taylor told him bluntly, "Lose weight."

That would be Step 1. Mesidor turned to swimming to burn calories, after his agent told him Antonio Brown had done it as part of his workout routine. As a side benefit, swimming freestyle helped him elongate his arm movements -- something that would help at defensive end -- while also increasing his stamina and lowering body fat.

It took four months for Mesidor to drop the weight. Next came extra conditioning work, extra work with Bain, extra work in the film room with Taylor, all to put himself in position to dominate. Miami hired Corey Hetherman as defensive coordinator and was returning to a true four-lineman front, which would help both Bain and Mesidor. Miami did not have a lot of depth behind those two, so the plan going into the season was to play them as much as possible.

"I know we're in college football and everyone wants to rotate and get young guys reps," Taylor said. "But we were trying to try to do something special."

That was obvious in the season opener against Notre Dame, when Bain and Mesidor had back-to-back sacks on the final Irish drive to seal a 27-24 win -- a victory that ultimately was the deciding factor in getting Miami into the College Football Playoff.

The two took off from there. Bain started to hear his name mentioned as a possible Heisman contender early in the year, and Mesidor took note. He believed he was just as deserving, and used the competition between them as even more motivation to improve.

Mesidor would be the first to arrive every morning. Every day after practice, Bain and Mesidor stayed late to work with Taylor. Every night, Mesidor would spend time in the office with Taylor going over film, to gain a deeper understanding of how opponents would try to block him. Mesidor would stay so long, Taylor would eventually have to kick him out so he could go home.

"Technique wise, he's always been that guy," Taylor said. "Great hands, great feet, really good burst off the ball and explosiveness. Plays with a really good pad level. He's got elite hand usage. He just needed to take that next step of being a pro -- the way you eat, the way you recover, the way you approach the game mentally, physically and emotionally."

The NFL Hall of Famer poured all his belief into Mesidor -- ultimately transforming his player's career.

"For the longest period of time, Akheem used to run away from his issues," Tedondo said. "Right now, the way he plays football, he attacks, that's why he goes all out every single play. All he really needed to do was believe in himself. He hears from someone like Coach Taylor, a coach that believes in him, it brings tears to my eyes. He changed Akheem's life."

As the months passed and Mesidor continued to rack up sacks and tackles for loss, he started to rise up draft boards. Making the CFP certainly helped. In four playoff games, Mesidor had a combined 5.5 sacks and 17 tackles. Before every playoff game, Taylor would pull Mesidor aside and tell him, "You're the best defensive player in the country."

"JT never gave up on me," Mesidor said. "He always knew what I was capable of doing. He never stopped believing in me."

Ultimately, Miami played Bain and Mesidor on nearly every snap of the season. Mesidor took 801 out of 1,003 total defensive snaps to rank No. 3 among all defensive linemen in snaps played this year. Among Power 4 defensive linemen, he ranked sixth on a snaps per game basis.

"I was training so hard this past year, on changing my body, on perfecting my craft. I put in overtime," Mesidor said. "All I wanted to do was go out there and play the best football. That's all my mentality was -- go out there and prove everybody wrong."

Mesidor wears a maple leaf charm on a necklace to remind him every day where he came from. He plans on hosting a draft party in Ottawa, so he can celebrate with friends and family whenever his name is called. Then, he will buy his mom a home, a thank you for all her years of sacrifice.

Headed into the draft, the latest ESPN mock draft has him as a first-round pick, though there have been questions about his previous injury and his age.

He has a simple response to all that: "I'm coming in pro-ready. All the B.S. aside. I'm coming to work. That's my job."

Diving headfirst into whatever may come.