The remarkable underdog story of Felix Anudike-Uzomah, the Chiefs’ 1st-round draft pick
Early Thursday evening, Felix Anudike-Uzomah hopped in a car and drove the half-hour to the party taking place outside Union Station in downtown Kansas City.
He would later joke about the obvious irony of it — tens of thousands of football fans gathered on the lawn to watch the NFL Draft, and none of them knew one of the prospects had easily blended in among them.
By night’s end, they’d nearly all know his name, at least.
The Chiefs drafted Anudike-Uzomah, an edge rusher from Kansas State and a hometown kid, with the final selection of the first round Thursday. The team’s owner, Clark Hunt, announced the pick to the crowd.
Anudike-Uzomah had gone home by then, and a few minutes before midnight, he logged onto to a Zoom call with local Kansas City media. He spoke before being asked a question.
“Oh, my, God,” he said quite clearly, and what you might not know is that the whole hometown story isn’t what prompted his reaction.
Well, it’s not the only thing that prompted his reaction.
Only three years ago, as some of his teammates at Lee’s Summit High School were picking between various college football offers, Anudike-Uzomah was deciding whether to accept an offer at all. At that time, Bowling Green and North Dakota State were the only schools that believed in his future enough to provide a scholarship. And that forced Anudike-Uzomah to consider another option altogether:
University of Missouri journalism school.
Really.
He loved the broadcast program at Lee’s Summit High, and if he couldn’t get Division I programs to believe he had a future in football, maybe it was best to focus on a different career sooner rather than later.
So let’s take a step back here: The guy who will soon don the uniform of an NFL team he remembers rooting for as a 7-year-old was thisclose to telling stories about sports for a living instead.
His high school coaching staff, led by head coach Eric Thomas, had a working relationship with a handful of coaches on the Kansas State staff. And finally that produced an offer.
Kind of.
K-State told Anudike-Uzomah they didn’t currently have a scholarship for him, but they expected they’d have one by the time he completed fall camp. Which was true. A couple of days into that camp, by the way, K-State assistant Conor Riley called Thomas, the Lee’s Summit High head coach.
“I answered the phone, and I’m like, ‘Did Felix get hurt? Why are you calling me when practice just started?’” Thomas recalled in a phone interview with The Star late Thursday. “He goes, ‘No, I just need to thank you.’”
What are you talking about?
“He’s the best dude in his class we have in camp right now.”
If it sounds as though everyone else whiffed on him, well, they pretty much did. But it completely wasn’t without reason. In fact, there were a lot of reasons.
Anudike-Uzomah played on the B-team as an eighth-grader. He stuck with it as a freshman, but he couldn’t crack the A-team roster that year, either, and played on the B-team once more.
A year later, a couple of assistant coaches pegged Anudike-Uzomah as a potential fit on the varsity team nonetheless — his first-step quickness was unmatched, they said — and Thomas distinctly remembers his reaction.
“I’m in our film room watching film of him just really getting his butt kicked against some varsity football players in camp,” he recalled. “And I said, ‘If he’s gonna play for us, he’s gotta be better than this.’”
The rest is history, Thomas concludes that story.
But that’s entirely the case. Anudike-Uzomah played as a sophomore only because of an injury, and then came the breakout season as a junior.
No offers, though.
If there are college recruiters around the Midwest excusing their miss on the day this guy winds up as a first-round pick, they’d probably point at Anudike-Uzomah’s size. He was a 215-pound defensive lineman as a senior. That doesn’t typically cut it in Power Five football.
Anudike-Uzomah was a three-sport athlete at Lee’s Summit, and he didn’t want to ruin basketball season by becoming too heavy. He didn’t want to balloon his body during the spring — track was possibly his best sport. He was an all-state triple jumper as a junior before COVID wiped out his final year.
Which is another twist in his story. As friends played video games to pass the time in quarantine, Anudike-Uzomah recalled, he took the opportunity to finally gain weight. Set up a gym in his basement. (He’s 6-3, 255 now.) It’s no wonder he made the impression in that initial fall camp — that and the first-step quickness.
He would finish his career at Kansas State sixth on the school’s all-time sack list with 20 1/2. Fourth in career forced fumbles with eight. He is all-everything in terms of accolades, the appearance of a kid who had it figured out all along.
But those who have followed him for years know the reality. He knows it.
He’s got a story to tell after all.
This story was originally published April 28, 2023 at 6:00 AM with the headline "The remarkable underdog story of Felix Anudike-Uzomah, the Chiefs’ 1st-round draft pick."