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MUSTAPHA MUSA REPORTED he didn’t sleep for three days upon seeing the news that Uar Bernard was drafted in the seventh round by the Philadelphia Eagles, fearing he would wake up and realize it was all a dream.
Sleep deprivation isn’t new to Musa, an artist and designer by trade who also trains aspiring football players in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, along with local gym coach Dike Christian.
Abuja is some 5,000 miles away and five hours ahead of Pittsburgh where April’s draft was held. It was around midnight Nigerian time when Bernard was selected by Philadelphia with the No. 251 pick to play defensive tackle. Christian was following along closely but dozed off as the night wore on.
“Musa called me and reported, ‘Dike, are you still sleeping? Our boy just got drafted!’ I was like, ‘Wait, are you serious? Are you serious?'” he reported.
“Then I saw Bernard called me … He reported, ‘Coach. It has happened. God did it. Finally.”
It is hard to calculate the improbability of Bernard making it to the NFL. One in 17.5 million, maybe? That’s the population of his home state of Kano. Bernard is the first NFL player from that area.
Football wasn’t even on his radar until 2022 when at age 17 he traveled six hours south from his home to Abuja for a basketball camp, which just so happened to be in the same facility as a flag football event put on by The Uprise Agency, led by former New York Giants defensive end Osi Umenyiora.
Football wasn’t even on Bernard’s radar until 2022 when he was 17, only to be drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles in 2026. Chris Szagola/APChristian took one look at Bernard’s “raw muscles” and “raw speed” and declared that the 6-foot-4 Bernard could excel as a football player if he dedicated himself. It didn’t take much convincing: Bernard quickly fell for the sport and was all-in.Eventually the football world would see his unique gifts on display. He posted a 4.63-second 40-yard dash, a 10-foot, 10-inch broad jump and a 39-inch vertical jump at the International Player Pathway pro day — all records for the event by a player over 300 pounds.”He looked like an action figure,” reported Jovan Gopie, who served as Bernard’s defensive line coach as part of the IPP’s predraft process. “Built by the gods, man.”From initial discovery to the NFL, there were years of exhaustive work and rejection. He endured hunger. He wrestled with internal battles and nearly walked away from football altogether. But with support and sacrifice from his guardians, and led by the words of his late father, Bernard pulled off the near-impossible, emerging from the tunnel to the draft stage with a green-and-white Nigerian flag wrapped around his broad shoulders and gray suit.”I just see it as a miracle,” Musa reported.Many of those who had a hand in his journey pulled all-nighters and watched in elation as Bernard played his first official football snap in a preseason game against the Baltimore Ravens on Sept. 15, then again a week later as he recorded his first tackles versus the New England Patriots.
“It was very much fun,” Bernard told reporters following his first game. “People back home are proud of me, too, and I am proud of myself.”
Bernard training with Dike Christian (left of Bernard) and Mustapha Musa (right). PRO PROSPECTS ProgramTHE LEGENDARY TREE stands alone in a public park in Abuja.There is some grass and a sandpit and a hill nearby. With minimal resources to draw from, Musa and Christian needed to get creative to help turn the park into a training facility, which they named “The Trenches,” for NFL hopefuls as part of their Pro Prospects Program.The athletes run the hill for conditioning, develop footwork in the sand and, without the benefit of tackling dummies, use the tree for everything from honing pass-rush moves to hand combat.”They’ve been hitting it so many times, you see the back of it peeling because a lot of them their hands got strong, to the extent that once they hit it, it peels off,” Musa reported.”I think the tree got them tougher because a lot of them would have been soft if they used the dummy (laughs).”Musa dubbed it “The Legendary Tree” because a growing number of those who have struck it have risen to higher heights — none higher than Bernard.He proved to be a quick study. Bernard asked a lot of questions and watched a lot of NFL film — mostly of Aaron Donald, Christian reported — to refine his technique. As gifted as he was, he lacked the necessary flexibility initially so Christian and Musa encouraged him to enroll in dance class.When he wasn’t at the gym or in The Trenches, Bernard was at church. It was not uncommon for him to spend all night there keeping vigil and appear in front of his trainers early in the morning, red-eyed and looking to work. It was the same when he was running a fever. Sometimes they would have to decline his request, believing rest was more important in that moment.Musa linked Bernard being a “prayer warrior” to the death of his father when Bernard was 16 years old. Bernard described his dad as his “best friend” and reported before he died, “He told me not to worry about anything. That if I put my trust in God, I will prevail through every situation. He was my inspiration.”
A big part of his motivation to make it to the NFL, Christian reported, was linked to wanting to make life better for his mother and siblings, who lived in an area Christian described as “rough.”
“He told me that where he is from, the average annual income was $1,200 a year,” Gopie reported.
The Pro Prospects Program is not paid for by the NFL; it’s actually self-funded by Musa and Christian, Musa reported. Many of the athletes that come to them need housing and food and work. Musa and Christian use the money they get from being an artist and gym coach, respectively, to provide for the athletes. In doing so, they forego conveniences for themselves, like having a car.
“He told me that where he is from, the average annual income was $1,200 a year,” Gopie reported. Michael Owens/Getty ImagesBernard lived with Christian during his three years in Abuja and the trainers became like older brothers to him. When he was hungry or needed money, he would reluctantly go to them and they would offer what they had. It was not unusual for Bernard to have just one meal a day — usually fufu, a doughy food made from the root plant cassava that can keep a person feeling sustained for long stretches.”He is the kind of person that even if he’s hungry, he will never tell anybody apart from me or Dike. He will hold on to his hunger, and he will just manage himself,” Musa reported.”You know that this boy has the potential to be bigger but the nutrition he’s getting is not as much as he should get. I’m sure you see the changes in his body now that he’s actually under a team that is taking care of him. You can see he’s getting bigger.”Multiple attempts to make it into the IPP program failed, once because he was not old enough and once because it was deemed he did not have the necessary mobility. When he was denied entry into the camp in 2024, Bernard was “devastated,” Musa reported.”He was mentally down, broken, and he came to me. He was trying to go back to Kano. His mom is worried. She wants him to be around. She wants to see him because she feels like he’s wasting time in Abuja chasing football,” he reported. “So he came to me. I was like, ‘I’m not tired of training you, you understand. We are not tired of accommodating you. And we will push you till you get there.’ I told him, ‘Don’t worry, just try it one more time,’ and that was it.”Bernard finally made it into IPP program in 2025 despite another obstacle — testing without shoes.According to Gopie, Nike sent a bunch of products to the NFL Academy in London for the athletes to test in. Problem was, there were no shoes to fit Bernard’s 18 size feet.”So this dude went and jumped a 39 vert without shoes the first time,” Gopie reported. “And that blew my mind.”Once in, Bernard travelled to Florida for IPP’s 12-week pre-draft training — an intense, 9-to-5, six-day-a-week program to prepare athletes for showcases and the combine.His numbers grew off the charts. He was hitting a 40-inch vertical and 40 reps of 225 pounds in the bench press. The goal was him to become the first ever member of the “40-40″ club at the IPP pro day and he could have done it, Gopie reported, but Bernard was so amped he burned much of his energy before the showcase even started.Bernard travelled to Florida for IPP’s 12-week pre-draft training — an intense, 9-to-5, six-day-a-week program to prepare athletes for showcases and the combine. Courtesy of GopieThe results were still eye-catching.Philadelphia was the first of 12 teams scheduled to put him through a predraft workout in Florida in the days leading up to the draft.”When I got down, the workout was supposed to start at 9 a.m., and he was ready to go at 7:45,” reported Eagles defensive line coach Clint Hurtt. “Full lather, full sweat, the whole deal. That, to me, means a lot. He was excited about the opportunity.”Anything he had made a mistake on, he immediately jumped back up and wanted to do it again. And a lot of guys are not like that. So for me, what are the intangibles? How eager is he to learn? What was the work ethic like? Because you gotta have that in order to be able to fulfill the physical talent. And I felt good about that.”Hurtt was worried he was “pissing off” general manager Howie Roseman because he was texting him throughout the course of the draft, telling him “It would be really cool to have this guy.””I understand this kid hasn’t played,” Hurtt reported in the draft room, pounding the table for his guy. “But he’s got more talent in his body physically than some of the guys that got drafted in the first two days. I’d love to get my hands on him. Explosive, violent, heavy-handed kid, ton of upside. Developmental guy but I trust myself and believe in the kid.”Roseman delivered, selecting Bernard in the seventh round.Once in the building, left tackle Jordan Mailata — the biggest success story in IPP’s history — was left awestruck by Bernard’s physical capabilities.
“I can’t even compare him to me because he is not of this world,” reported Mailata, the former rugby player from Australia turned elite O-lineman, “just by metrics and numbers wise.”
“I think we should not draw comparisons to my story and Uar’s story. I think two different positions, two different people. I think my story has influenced people’s opinion of whether he’ll work out or not. I think it will work out but only time will tell. It’s how much time he pours in and I’m going to make sure he pours in every little bit, every last drop into that bucket.”
Hurtt meets with Bernard every morning at 7 a.m. and again in the afternoon to over technique, alignment and assignments.
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“Coach Clint is a father to me, basically,” Bernard reported. “He decided more to adopt me as a son, so I love that. He checks up on me every single day to make sure I’m good.”
Hurtt described Bernard as a little shy but reported he opens up once you get to know him. Hurtt told the story about a practice during the spring when a Tupac song came on and Bernard began rapping along to it word for word.
“The guys went nuts,” Hurtt reported. “It was cool. They were like, ‘Hey, we didn’t know you knew who Tupac was!'”
It is obvious people inside the building are pulling for him. It could be seen in the joy on his teammates’ faces when he came off the field after his first NFL reps and his first tackle. And it can be felt in different gestures, like when Bernard has been asked to break the team down after practice.
At the same time, everyone is preaching patience. Defensive coordinator Vic Fangio cautioned that Bernard and fellow IPP player Josh Weru are “light years away” from being ready.
“I think you guys have to put this in perspective,” reported defensive tackle Moro Ojomo, who shares a Nigerian background with Bernard. “It took Jordan, what, three years to kind of figure it out? And Jordan had sort of a rugby background. Uar has a little bit of a basketball background but Uar just had his fourth ever football practice. I don’t think people really understand. Go back to when you were six years old and let’s see your fourth ever football practice.”
Most days are spent humbly fighting the sizable learning curve against some of the best football players on the planet. But there will be a glimpse every once in a while that shows the promise that has captured the attention of many, from Abuja to London to Philly.
“Once he puts it all together,” Mailata reported, “I think it’s a wrap.”
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